
Class 

Book b 



THE FRENCH MIRACLE 

AND 

FRENCH CIVILISATION 



THE FRENCH MIRACLE 

AND 

FRENCH CIVILISATION 



TWO ESSAYS 



BY 

VICTOR GIRAUD 

SECRETARY OF I_A REVUE DES DEUX MONDES 



TRANSLATED BY 

H. P. THIEME AND W. A. MCLAUGHLIN 

OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 



PUBLISHED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF 

THE DEPARTMENT OF ROMANCE LANGUAGES 

OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 



c Hllo 



$*** 

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The Ann Arbor Press 
Ann Arbor. Michigan 



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TO THE MEMORY OF THE TEACHERS 

OF FRANCE 
SCHOLARS AND PATRIOTS ALL 
WHO DIED IN THE GREAT WAR 
THAT MANKIND MIGHT LIVE 
IN JUSTICE FREEDOM AND PEACE 
WE DEDICATE THE TRANSLATION 
OF THESE TWO ESSAYS 
WHEREIN ARE RECORDED 
THEIR VALOR AND THEIR SPIRIT 
AND THE IDEALS DEVOTION TO WHICH 
FORMED THEIR SUPREME INSPIRATION 



PREFACE 

Victor Giraud, the author of the two essays con- 
tained in this volume, was born November 26, 1868, 
at Macon, France, famous as the birthplace of 
Lamartine, the kindly, friendly, human author of 
the Meditations, the vigorous and patriotic ex- 
ponent of liberalism, the poet-statesman of the Re- 
public of 1848. It was at the Lycee Lamartine in 
his native town that Victor Giraud spent his youth- 
ful years of study preparatory to going to Paris, 
where he later entered the famous Lycee Henri IV. 
In the early nineties he was a pupil at the Ecole 
Normale Superieure, that justly renowned insti- 
tution on the Rue d'Ulm wherein the intellectual 
elite of each generation is trained under the best of 
masters as scholars and cultivated men, for their life 
work as teachers and guides to the youth of the na- 
tion in the Lycees and Universities. Here he came 
under the happy influence of the great Brunetiere 
''who, confronted by a type of criticism too exclu- 
sively philological or too minute, maintained the in- 
alienable rights which may be justly claimed by 
ideas and intelligence." Brunetiere was his master 
and friend whose secret wish was that some day his 
pupil might write "the history of his thought and 
writings." In 1894 Victor Giraud won his title of 
agrege des lettrcs and forthwith went to the Univer- 



6 PRKFACK 

sity of Fribourg, Switzerland, where for several 
years he held the professorship of Modern French 
Literature. In 1897 he took as the subject of one of 
his courses — Taine, his works and influence. This 
was the outgrowth of work begun six years before 
while he was a pupil at the Ecole Normale and 
had received the kindly consideration of Taine 
himself. These lectures were published in 1901 as 
an Essay on Taine and were awarded the Bordin 
prize by the French Academy. A year after ap- 
peared his Critical Bibliography of Taine. 

Taine was not the only author whose life and 
works and influence held the interest of the 
young professor. In the summer of 1898 he gave 
a course on Pascal, the notes of which were 
published as Pascal, Vhomme, Voeuvre. et Vinfl-u- 
ence, 1898, disclosing the marked influence of 
Brunetiere's method. The work was crowned by 
the Academy. When he published his: Pascal: 
Etudes d'histoire morale, 1901. the Academy award- 
ed it the first Bordin prize. In the preface of this 
work he writes: "For twenty years Pascal has 
been my almost constant companion and I could 
never express the profit, intellectual and other, 
which I feel I have derived from this companion- 
ship. Of all the influences that I have undergone 
that of Pascal is certainly the one which began the 
earliest, has been the least interrupted, and remained 
the most profound, an influence not only undergone, 
but sought after, desired, and loved." 



PREFACE 7 

A third great name and influence in French liter- 
ature owes much to the active pen and indefatigable 
mind of M. Giraud, for his Studies on Chateaubri- 
and, 1904, 1912, are but a foretaste and promise of a 
work announced in preparation on the Religion of 
Chateaubriand: origins, evolution and influence — a 
critical study in the history of religious ideas in the 
French literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth 
centuries. 

The present, also, has furnished an attractive field 
for the fruitful pursuit of his quest : the discovery, 
exposition, and criticism of the dominant ideas of 
the age as expressed in literature by the master 
minds who have exerted great influence on the gen- 
eration which is to-day in full activity. The Mast- 
ers of Yesterday and To-day {Les Maitres d'hier 
et d'aujourd'hui, 1912, and Les Maitres de I'heure, 
2 vols., 191 1, 1914) were crowned by the Academy 
and awarded the first prize of the Academy. These 
essays treat with method, precision, and wonderful 
acumen, the lives, works and influence of the most 
important literary critics and novelists, poets and 
historians of the present day or the immediate 
past. Keenly interested in life with all its prob- 
lems, particularly those dealing with religion and 
morals, M. Giraud has written many essays, such 
as those collected in Books and Questions of 
the Day (Livres et Questions d'Aujourd'hui, 1906) 
Anticlericalisme et catholicisme , 1906, Ferdinand 
Brunetiere, 1907. He has edited the Pensees of 



8 PREFACE 

Pascal, and selections from his other works; Pen- 
sees, Reflexions, Maximes from Chateaubriand's 
works ; the Pensees of Joubert ; Pensees selected 
from the works of Bossuet, and many other books. 
All these works clearly indicate the variety, the 
unity of interest and method characteristic of the 
subject of this sketch. He stands to-day one of the 
acknowledged masters of the art so eminently 
French: fruitful, helpful, suggestive criticism, the 
outcome of clear thinking, exact knowledge, com- 
bined with clarity of expression and felicity of 
phrase, lightness of touch and accuracy of thrust, 
and a wide, but definite view of general ideas, de- 
rived from an intimate, refined knowledge of the 
relations of man, his thoughts and his actions. His 
own view of criticism he once expressed as follows : 
"I never had much faith in what we were wont to 
call, in days gone by, scientific criticism and my 
faith is growing less and less .... Real criticism 
will always remain what it has always been, the 
free, living testimony of one mind regarding an- 
other, of one soul regarding another soul, homo 
additus libris. This most certainly does not mean, 
however, that it may not contain a large share, and 
in increasing amount, I do not wish to say of sci- 
ence (science), but rather of knowledge (connais- 
sance) ; that is, precise and positive information and 
objective, impersonal investigation." (N olivettes 
Etudes sur Chateaubriand). 



PREFACE 9 

The following two essays appeared in the oldest 
and most important French literary organ La Revue 
des Deux Mondes, of which M. Giraud has been for 
some time the secretary. The French Miracle was 
first published in the April number, 191 5, — and later 
in book form together with other essays in 191 5 ; the 
Civilisation Francaise, an essay on French Civilisa- 
tion appeared in 191 7 and won the Prix d' Elo- 
quence, awarded by the Academy — it was later pub- 
lished separately and dedicated to the memory of 
Pierre Maurice Masson, a Professor in the Univer- 
sity of Fribourg, a lieutenant in the infantry, who 
fell April 16, 1916, "in defense of the soil of Lor- 
raine and French civilisation." In June, 1916, in 
the Sorbonne a posthumous degree of Doctor of 
Letters was conferred upon M. Masson for his re- 
markable thesis on Jean Jacques Rousseau, the 
proof of which he corrected in the trenches. 

Tt has been a general belief held from the begin- 
ning of the war, by those who knew France, that on 
the outcome of the war depended the whole future of 
French civilization and consequently of all civiliza- 
tion. Our own President but lately, in that address 
which stands beyond praise, expressed those ideals 
of justice, of right and humanity upon which our 
national life depends and upon which the exist- 
ence of all free peoples can alone thrive. These are 
the ideals expressed by M. Giraud in these essays 
and in more than one passage the reader will be 
reminded of the loftv words of our own President 



10 PREFACE 

and the high ideals he so admirably expressed. It 
is in the hope that this community of ideals may 
be more clearly understood and our debt to France, 
our moral debt especially, be more keenly appre- 
ciated, that these essays are presented in this coun- 
try to a wider public than that which they might 
reach in their original form. 

The translators are painfully aware that transla- 
tions are not infrequently treacherous, traducing 
rather than transferring the thought; their one 
hope, however, is that in turning these essays into 
their mother tongue they may have done so without 
violating her genius, and yet, may have succeeded 
in preserving some slight traces of the charm, the 
warmth, and the vigor of the original. 



THE FRENCH MIRACLE 

Lest we forget. It is the story of yesterday and 
yet it seems the story of ages ago .... 

But just when I recall to mind this story, when I 
attempt to state precisely the principal features of 
our moral, political and social situation immediately 
before the outbreak of the war, between the general 
elections in May and the thunderbolt which fell 
upon us in August, my pen wavers and I stop to re- 
flect. God forbid that we should revive our old dif- 
ferences and disturb the truce that all the parties 
have made — the "sacred union" of the present mo- 
ment. But the memory of these lingers in the 
minds of all and we need only allude to them. The 
least we can say is that we were thoroughly divided 
ten months ago. Our minds were perplexed, our 
consciences beclouded, our passions given free rein, 
and our evil fate did not spare us even those scand- 
als which mark the end of a regime, like a symptom 
full of evil omen. Pessimists called it decadence. 
Optimists, those who, during the two preceding 
years, had thought they saw rising the dawn of a 
new France and had hailed the birth of a new 
spirit, wondered whether they were not mistaken 
or whether they should not wait for another gen- 
eration before resuming their uncertain and timid 
hope. 



12 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 

Suddenly in this corrupt, troubled and stormy at- 
mosphere, like a thunderbolt the war burst forth. 
And immediately a new France appeared : a France 
united, proud without bravado, calm and serious, 
the very one we had built up in our dreams and 
which we had almost despaired of ever seeing with 
our mortal eyes; a France which accepted with- 
out a murmur her fate as though for forty years 
she had been dreading this tragic day and had 
been preparing for it in silence. In the twinkling 
of an eye, all the pettiness of days gone by was 
forgotten and sunk deep in the past. To the pro- 
found astonishment of our enemies, even of our 
friends, and we must confess, to our own aston- 
ishment, all our dissensions vanished. The de- 
plorable murder of an eloquent socialist orator 
(Jaures) did not succeed in disturbing even for a 
moment that union which had sprung up so sud- 
denly. The Chamber of Deputies had immediately 
risen above itself, and in a session never-to-be-for- 
gotten, gave an example of concord, of patriotic 
wisdom and dignity which thrilled the hearts of all. 
The political leaders spoke the precise, strong and 
sober words which should be spoken, and their sim- 
ple, terse and vigorous eloquence, worthy of the 
fairest days of Athens, was the finest homage that 
could be given the cause they were defending. So- 
cialists, Conservatives, Monarchists and Republi- 
cans, representatives of every political theory; 
Catholics, Freethinkers, Israelites, Protestants, be- 
lievers in every type of philosophy or religion ; 



THE FRENCH MIRACLE 13 

noble and peasant, business man and workingman, 
all groups of society, were united, melted into one, 
lifted up and carried away, inspired by the same im- 
pulse. One feeling and one alone, one single 
thought swayed the mind of every Frenchman. 
Why did we think, even }^esterday, of France as 
divided? There is but one France, the France that 
lives forever, thoroughly unified and completely 
united against the brutal aggressor. Never at any 
period in our history was our spiritual unity so com- 
plete, so profound, so intimate as on the morrow of 
the day when it seemed most imperilled. 

How shall we explain that astounding change, 
that spontaneous springing up of a great common 
and national spirit, that sudden transfiguration of 
a whole people which we even yet behold in aston- 
ishment and wonder? Cold reason may not suffice; 
but it can account for certain aspects of this 
phenomenon. 

That the conservative elements of French public 
opinion should welcome in a manly and firm manner 
the prospect of a European War should occasion 
no surprise. French Conservatives have, no doubt, 
their faults; but no one has been able seriously to 
challenge the sincerity and restless vigilance of their 
patriotism ; had they been more frequently heeded 
there can be no doubt that France in 1914 would 
have been better prepared for the struggle. Many 
of them expected a war sooner or later ; some could 
not tell whether they should hope for war or fear it ; 
almost all prepared for it and also tried to prepare 



14 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 

public opinion for it. All, in any case, thoroughly 
convinced that a nation, according to Renan's pro- 
found expression is above all "une creation mili- 
taire," and deploring the fact that France no longer 
played the glorious role she formerly played in the 
world, put their supreme hope and their supreme 
thought in the army and counted upon it with every 
hope of victory, when the hour of national awaken- 
ing should come. Royalists, Bonapartists, Nation- 
alists, Progressists, Liberals, followers of tradition 
of every shade of political opinion deserve no special 
credit for immediately rallying to the colors ; they 
deserve far greater credit for having immediately 
put aside the slight differences or serious diverg- 
ences which separated them one from the other, 
and still more from those at the head of affairs, 
and for having unhesitatingly taken their stand 
around the representatives of a regime, the ways 
and methods of which they rejected and against 
which even yesterday they fought with might and 
main. We are willing to believe that their oppon- 
ents in similar circumstances would have given 
proof of a like spirit of unselfishness. 

For those who called themselves "republicains de 
gauche" radicals or radical-socialists the sacrifice 
was greater. How many of these proud descend- 
ants of the great ancestors of '93 had gradually 
drifted to the guileless fancies of pacifism, ranted 
against war, denounced the dangers of Nationalism 
and Militarism, protested against our colonial ex- 
pansion, believed in the possibility of a friendly un- 



THF, FRENCH MIRACLE 15 

derstanding with Germany, condemned the idea of 
revanche, and secretly in their hearts had surrender- 
ed our two lost provinces ! 

How many had rashly cut down the military bud- 
get, and even among those who became resigned to 
the three year service law, how many were prepar- 
ing as soon as the opportunity should present itself, 
to undo what they had done? How many, finally, 
had in a thousand and one instances, shown a lack of 
confidence in the army or even open hostility to it, 
both ridiculous and dangerous as if every general 
had in him the making of a Bonaparte ! All this pre- 
judice, all this bias, hanging like clouds over our 
minds was swept away forever by the hurricane 
from the East. The spirit of grace breathed upon 
these apologists of the civil power and they awoke 
fervent patriots ; they donned their uniforms, they 
submitted to the hard demands of discipline ; deep in 
their hearts was revealed once more that spirit 
which animated the Volunteers of '92. And, indeed, 
the sight of their political friends wrestling, in these 
grave circumstances, with the difficulties and re- 
sponsibilities of power, has in no wise weakened 
their sudden conversion. But after all they are con- 
verted and we can ask no more. 

A conversion which should offer, it would seem, 
more difficulties but which took place nevertheless, 
is that of the various socialist and revolutionary 
groups. Let us admit this : when the first rumors 
of war began to circulate it was towards the Gener- 



1 6 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 

al Confederation of Labor that all eyes were turned 
in the greatest apprehension. That our fear was un- 
founded was proved by the outcome. But among 
the workingmen the gospel according to Marx had 
made so many converts; we had heard so often and 
so much about the class war, about the "Internation- 
al," about the claims of the proletariat and about 
the general strike. The war against war had been 
so often declared ; Socialists and Revolutionists had 
cried out against the bourgeois social system and 
the prejudice that patriotism arouses. They had 
threatened so often to prevent mobilization by viol- 
ence, to fire upon their officers, to disorganize na- 
tional defense. And they professed a blind belief 
in social democracy. We may rest assured that our 
enemy, for they have shouted it from the housetops, 
counted on Jaures to provoke another uprising, a 
second Commune. Like many others, this dream 
did not come true. Our Socialists did their full 
duty, as the German Socialists did theirs. Less 
logical than ours, and especially less frank, in any 
case under greater official pressure, the latter, we 
know so to-day, carefully avoided the offer of a 
friendly understanding between the laboring class of 
bodi countries with a view to making the war im- 
possible. That action opened the eyes of the 
French "comrades." They realized that they had 
been deceived, and that to persevere in their revolu- 
tionary theories and fancies, would simply be playing 
the game of warlike and militaristic Germany. Quite 
convinced, moreover, that France had not wished 



THE FRENCH MIRACLE 1 7 

the war and that she had done everything to avoid it, 
they became convinced that to fight valiantly for 
her, was to fight for their own ideals, was to pre- 
pare the coming of perpetual peace and of the 
German Republic. Reassured as to the principles 
involved, they made ready to take up arms against 
the common enemy with as much serenity and en- 
thusiasm as the most ardent Nationalist. 

We can now easily picture to ourselves the diverse 
reasons which impelled the various parties which 
are striving to mould public opinion in France to- 
day, to rush unhesitatingly in one impetuous sweep 
to the defense of the frontier in danger. Some took 
up arms to defend the France of long ago, the 
France of the Crusades, of St. Louis, of Joan of 
Arc, France "the Eldest Daughter of the Church," 
whose mission is far from being fulfilled. Others 
took up arms for rationalistic and free-thinking 
France, the land of Voltaire and Diderot. Others, 
finally, fought for France the home of democracy 
and equality, the France of the Revolution, the land 
par excellence of social rights and political liberties. 
And all, instinctively, without any abstract theor- 
ies, set out for the defense of France. Simply be- 
cause it was France, the sweet, motherly land, their 
own native land, the land of their ancestors, the 
sacred spot of ground where their dead lie buried, 
where they themselves were born, where they lisped 
their first words, the land whose familiar horizons 
charmed their first gaze, mingled with all their joys 
and all their griefs, and because they could no long- 



1 8 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 

er live, if these fields, these woods, these cities 
which their ancestors had founded should fall into 
the hands of men of another race, coarse in man- 
ners, rude in speech, heavy and befogged in mind 
and vague in thought. And all this is true ; all these 
explanations are correct and they must be given. 
But, that all these causes, apparent or deep- 
seated, which brought about French unanimity, 
should work together, that in the twinkling of an 
eye they should make a nation, but yesterday 
so divided, the least disciplined and at times the 
most anarchistic, a compact, intangible mass show- 
ing no signs of past division ; that we should see this 
sacred union of minds, wills and hearts established, 
that before our eyes, as though by a sudden chem- 
ical reaction, a sort of sudden crystallization of the 
soul of France should come about, a thing which 
goes beyond and confounds our rational faculties, 
in all that I see the first French miracle. 

II. 

And there are other miracles. First and foremost 
must be placed the international and diplomatic sit- 
uation of the conflict. Indeed it was better than we 
could have hoped for and such that we have had no 
reason to regret having waited patiently forty-four 
years for the hour of fate. When the world knows 
in detail the diplomatic history of these forty-four 
years it will know what forbearance, self-efface- 



THE} FRENCH MIRACLE) 19 

merit, self-possession, and stoic resignation France 
had to possess in order to resist the threats, the in- 
cessant provocations of German brutality. Mention- 
ing only such facts as are universally known, no 
one can reproach our country with having sought 
eagerly an opportunity for revanche. Willingly, 
systematically so that the world might not accuse us 
of disturbing the peace of the world to satisfy any 
national rancour we might feel, we were ready to 
make every concession compatible with our dignity, 
each time there arose between Germany and our- 
selves a question that was purely personal. If war 
finally broke out, it is because Germany declared 
war against us. And if we made up our minds so 
promptly as to what we were to do, it was first of all 
because it was a question of not allowing a small 
heroic people to be crushed by an empire drunk with 
ambition and devoid of any scruple. Consequently, 
without any seeking on our part, France appeared 
in the eyes of all in the very attitude which could 
most harmonize with her ancient traditions: she 
was a victim because she was attempting to set an- 
other free; she w r as attacked because she had been 
unwilling to allow the commission of an act of in- 
ternational injustice. 

This noble attitude had its immediate reward. 
Russia, which the Germans by their bungling policy 
had so completely succeeded in throwing into our 
arms, Russia, whose just cause we were espousing, 
was going to use all her strength in the service of 
our common interests. Italy under other circum- 



20 THE) FRENCH MIRACLE 

stances might have given us reason to fear on ac- 
count of her obligations to the Central Powers ; but 
our adversaries in dealing with Italy exhibited a 
lack of frankness and tact; consequently, she de- 
clared herself neutral and very soon after affirmed 
that this neutrality could be for her only a provision- 
al attitude. There remained England which in truth 
for the past ten years had been drawing closer to 
us in a very cordial manner and whose general in- 
terests were clearly identical with our own. But 
England, pacifist by instinct, a prey to serious in- 
ternal disorders and moreover quite open to German 
influence, was divided against herself. The fate of 
Servia was for her an object of very remote con- 
cern. The hateful violation of the neutrality of 
Belgium put an end to her hesitation. English loy- 
alty and English interests happened to coincide and 
England in her anger inflicted upon Germany a sur- 
prise from which she has not yet recovered. By 
her duplicity, by her violence, by her lack of fore- 
sight, Germany herself completed the ''encircling" 
which she had long been dreading as the greatest of 
misfortunes. France, on the contrary, by her loyal- 
ty, her prudence, and the generous spirit of her 
methods, thanks also to the skill of her diplomats, 
was in a moral and material position perhaps unique 
in the whole course of her history. The situation 
which ended in the fall of Napoleon was now, a 
hundred years later, reversed, and in favor of 
France. While her implacable enemy was being de- 
serted, alliances were coming to her. And by a real 



THE FRENCH MIRACLE 21 

symbolical coincidence, at the very moment when 
she was defending the freedom of the world, and, 
we may say without boasting, the cause of Christian 
civilization, she was at the same time fighting for 
her own existence, for the future of her own gen- 
ius, and for the hope of reparation, which for nearly 
half a century she had been jealously treasuring in 
her heart. 

To maintain this role, to fulfill such a mission and 
not be crushed thereby, to justify also so much hope 
and deserve such confidence, material strength and 
power of soul were necessary, of which many, even 
among our friends, did not believe France entirely 
capable. They knew her to be insufficiently pre- 
pared, courageous to be sure, but nervous, quick to 
be disillusioned, more capable of enthusiasm than 
endurance. And they knew that the adversary was 
formidable, admirably equipped and that for forty 
years he had been training for this war which he 
had let loose. They knew that he would be the 
more violent and the more pitiless because, while 
feeling himself threatened in his very existence, 
anxious about the future, he had suffered disap- 
pointments in diplomacy which had ruffled his pride 
and shaken his security. They knew in short that 
eager to accomplish his purpose and forced to strike, 
at the very first, blows that would be decisive, he 
would turn almost all his efforts against France, 
which was to be crushed and conquered at any cost 
within a few weeks. 



22 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 

Let us recall to mind the telling article in the Lon- 
don Times : ''There were days and days during the 
swift German advance when we feared that the 
French armies were no match for the German, that 
Germany would be conquered on the seas and from 
her eastern frontier and that after the war France 
would remain a power only through the support of 
her Allies." Our friends might have been still 
more anxious in their fear had they known as we 
are beginning to know now all the mysterious de- 
tails of the extraordinary preparedness of the Ger- 
mans, all the infinite resources our enemy possessed 
in men, in war material, in spies, particularly per- 
haps in spies, their wonderful genius for organiza- 
tion, their absolute lack of scruple, their faith in 
their superiority in all things, exulting in the un- 
failing success of their arms. In turn we now realize 
the reasons for their unhealthy pride, their hymns 
of triumph before the victory, their shouts like 
Barbarians falling on the spoils; between France 
and them the match was not an even one. All the 
probabilities, all the chances were that France would 
be overwhelmed by the number of soldiers, by the 
fire of shells lavishly spent, by the superiority of 
arms and equipment perfected according to the very 
last word of science. 

However, without excitement, without losing self- 
control, France completed her final preparations for 
war. This impressive calmness, this quiet, serious 
dignity immediately inspired confidence in the most 
pessimistic. Those who have not seen with their 



THE FRENCH MIRACLE) 23 

own eyes the good order, precision and rapidity with 
which the mobilisation was accomplished, will never 
know how easily the French temperament complies 
with the requirements of method. I imagine the 
numberless spies of Emperor William must have 
been very much surprised and if they succeeded in 
getting truthful reports to their master they must 
have admitted in such reports that things could not 
have gone off more smoothly even in methodical 
Germany. Personally I shall always have before my 
eyes a double picture of the first days of war. It 
was the second day of mobilisation, in a suburban 
train which was carrying a number of soldiers to 
Paris. It was a pleasure to see their determination, 
and their high spirits. At one of the stations an 
old general, with a pure white moustache, boarded 
the train and had evidently just returned to duty. 
The men outdid themselves in courtesy, offering him 
their seats, insisting that he sit down, but he refused 
and remained standing during the whole trip, en- 
gaging in conversation. In that tone of cordial and 
familiar simplicity which even a German lieutenant 
could never assume he carried on the conversation, 
replying to the remarks of this one and that one, 
saying that we did not want the war, that it was 
forced upon us and that each one must do his duty, 
that there would be days of trial when everybody, 
himself included, would suffer from hunger and 
thirst and lack of sleep, but that France was well 
worth all these sacrifices .... And as he talked, 
expressing the thought of all, we experienced some- 



24 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 

thing like a foretaste of that close and trustful 
solidarity which during the war has sprung up be- 
tween the French trooper and his chief of which 
we have since had so many examples. When the 
train stopped there were handshakes and good wish- 
es exchanged ; the officer had won over all his men ; 
to-morrow, under fire, he would be able to lead 
them anywhere. 

Meanwhile, a young man came into our compart- 
ment who had been accompanied thus far by his 
wife, carrying a baby in her arms ; they gave each 
other one long embrace ; the wife was wonderful in 
her simplicity and calmness ; not a tear ; in that 
countenance, somewhat pale, you could see that 
strong, almost tragic determination not to give way 
to emotion; and I shall never forget that vigorous 
and tender way with which she held out the baby 
to its father for one last kiss. Ah ! those Germans 
who thought we were a people whose end had come, 
how mistaken they were ! 

Who of us has not had impressions similar to 
these which at the very outset filled our hearts with 
so much hope? Here among many others is one 
of the experiences of Emile Faguet: 

"n Aug. Trains are passing by loaded with sol- 
diers who are going back to their regiments. Too 
many in my opinion are singing and shouting aloud. 
But many of them are quiet and determined, very 
simple in manner, with a look of decision in their 
eyes. In short, they are full of confidence them- 
selves, and inspire it in others. You feel that they 



THE FRENCH MIRACLE 2$ 

are ready for anything and afraid of nothing. Lord, 
in their coarse linen tunics and their twilled trous- 
ers, Lord, how handsome they are ! Their speech 
is not confused or boastful : 'It won't be long, but 
in any case as long as need be,' 'When each one is 
sure of all the others, it is all right.' French good 
sense and French courage are in each one of their 
words. Brave fellows !" 

Deceived by our moderation, our reserve, our 
conciliatory spirit, during the last forty years, the 
Germans imagined that we would be afraid of war. 
Once more they were thoroughly mistaken. 

They were also greatly mistaken with regard to a 
people extremely peaceful, but very jealous of their 
independence and who had in their past history a 
record of heroism of which they were justly proud. 
Not counting on certain complications, judging oth- 
ers by herself, unaccustomed to give any weight to 
the sentiment of honor, Germany was convinced 
that Belgium would not dare resist her, but would 
limit herself to making a purely formal protest. 
But Belgium had a king worthy of her, a king in 
whose veins moreover flowed French blood. King 
Albert energetically declared that he would defend 
the neutrality of his country. Germany in her sur- 
prise and fury, checked in her mad rush onward, 
took two weeks to break that obstacle, unforeseen 
and for us providential. That was indeed for France 
the beginning of her salvation. What would have 
happened if, on the very first days of the month of 
August, in the midst of the mobilisation of the 



26 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 

French troops, the barbarian horde crossing Belgium 
unhindered, had been able to come down fullweight 
on our northern frontier? Could we have with- 
stood long enough that first shock so as to permit 
our troops in the interior to concentrate and bring 
relief? One thing is certain, namely, that the Bel- 
gians by their wonderful resistance, worthy of all 
praise, delayed the German offensive and succeeded 
in stamping the "treacherous blow" of our enemy 
as a deed of hateful cowardice, the shame of 
which they will never be able to wipe out ; thus they 
gave us a new ally and at the same time a precious 
breathing spell, and in contrast to our enemies, rais- 
ed us in the eyes of the civilised world, to the most 
desirable and the most beautiful moral position : as 
the champion of the right, keeper of a plighted 
word, incorruptible representative of eternal justice. 
In this respect particularly, history was indeed work- 
ing in the best interests of France. 



III. 

Still the great question which filled us with an- 
guish remained: Could France resist, without giv- 
ing way, the terrible onslaught of these three mil- 
lion men methodically trained, armed to the teeth 
with the most deadly engines of war, and aroused 
against the hereditary foe from their childhood, in 
their loftiest feelings as well as in their lowest in- 
stincts? Against an adversary thus equipped, valor, 



the: French miracle 27 

noble-mindedness, idealism, are not strong enough 
weapons. Physical force is needed. Would France 
have that physical strength? She did not have the 
numbers ; her armament disclosed serious gaps ; she 
was not prepared for the type of war which was 
to be waged against her. Fortunately she did have 
a wonderful gun, a high command originally some- 
what heterogeneous, but which could easily become 
of the very first order; finally, an army which had 
faith — faith in the destiny of France and in the 
infinite resources of French genius. But would all 
that be sufficient? Our friends were anxious: M. 
Ferrero, M. Seippel, and the eloquent author of the 
article in the London Times have since admitted it. 
They were justly frightened on our account by the 
size, by the brutality, by the heavy armor of the Ger- 
man colossus. It w T as the fight between David and 
Goliath over again. Who was going to win? The 
world held its breath. Through the importance of 
the questions involved, through the enormity of the 
forces engaged, never did a more stupendous, more 
terrible struggle arouse all mankind. 

After the first few fortunate passes, David gave 
way before his fearful adversary. That was the 
battle of Charleroi. The anxiety increased through- 
out the world. Would we be able to recover from 
that repulse? The enemy was exultant. He found 
in his triumph the justification for his crime. His 
leaders had not deceived him. He was going to 
tread upon that promised land whose riches his 
chiefs had so often held out before him. A few 



28 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 

days more and he would be in that Paris of which 
he had been dreaming since childhood in his un- 
couth way, the pillaging of which had been held out 
before him to satisfy his hungry greed. A few 
days more and the Emperor would enter that superb 
city which had always rejected his advances and the 
humiliation and destruction of which he had sworn. 
The sudden attack with which he so often threat- 
ened us seemed about to succeed. 

Then it was that a great leader arose up among 
us. The Commander in Chief of the French armies 
was scarcely known except to his immediate col- 
leagues who appreciated at their real value his abil- 
ity, his vigor, his rough but kindly justice, and his 
prodigious self-control. With admirable clearness 
he saw the situation in its true light and without 
striking a blow he knew immediately what decision 
had to be made, however difficult it might be. He 
realized that the one thing which had to be saved 
and maintained intact and free to move was the 
army on which depended the victories to come. 
Sacrificing all the generals who did not measure up 
to their tasks, sacrificing a large strip of national 
territory, he retreated. He retreated rapidly, meth- 
odically, checking the enemy as he went along and 
inflicting on him bloody losses, thus weakening him, 
tiring him, wearing him out in every way, clearing 
the way before him, forestalling his plans, making- 
good use of his savage impatience, watching for his 
slightest mistakes, drawing him on little by little, to 



THE FRENCH MIRACIX 29 

the ground where the fight might take place under 
conditions most favorable to our troops. On the 
fifth of September these conditions were fulfilled. 
The command for the offensive was given in an 
order for the day, the manly and sober eloquence of 
which will remain forever famous. France was to 
be saved. 

And during this time France showed that she 
was worthy of her soldiers and her leaders. While 
Northern and Eastern France accepted in trembl- 
ing, but without complaint, the brutal invasion, 
Paris, after all precautions had been taken, remained 
admirable in her quiet dignity. Paris attended to 
business, in a more serious way to be sure than 
usual, but without excitement, and with that air of 
elegant fearlessness, which is characteristic of 
French courage. Paris was waiting. For what? 
She did not know. She knew but one thing, namely, 
that she would be defended to the last. She was 
placed under a military governor, who was one of 
those generals trained in the hard school of our 
colonial wars, like Joffre and Lyautey, men of 
thought and action, and who are able to prepare for 
battles and win them, and at the same time to organ- 
ize and govern a country. A most fortunate choice, 
if it is true that the army of Paris contributed in 
a most definite manner to the victory of the Marne. 
Paris was confident because she was defended by 
Gallieni. But she was prepared for anything, know- 
ing as she did that the fortifications of her en- 
trenched camp were temporarily insufficient. From 



30 THE FRENCH MIRACLE) 

day to day, from hour to hour she listened attentive- 
ly to the boom of the cannon which was not far 
off. One morning she learned that the German 
danger was passing away, and that just as fifteen 
hundred years before, the barbarian hordes for no 
apparent reason, were turning away from the capital 
and marching to the fatal meeting on the fields 
around Chalons. Paris was saved. Paris under- 
stood the mystery of her deliverance no more than 
she had that of fifteen centuries before. I dare say 
that this mystery is to-day more incomprehensible 
than was that of fifteen hundred years ago. For it 
would be impossible to compare even very superfici- 
ally the Paris of the days of Atilla with the Paris of 
our day. We are not certain that it was a mistake 
on the part of the king of the Huns to have neglect- 
ed to take and put to sack the valiant city which was 
to play such a role in the future, and in any case if it 
was a mistake, it was one which did not compromise 
in any way the success of his campaign ; for it was 
of infinitely greater importance for him to take 
Orleans, the key to the south, and as a matter of 
fact it was upon this city that he let loose his howl- 
ing pack. But what was true of Atilla was not true 
of his present successor. To take Paris and dictate 
peace to us, before Russia could be ready; such was 
the main goal of Emperor William, as his gener- 
als had told us sufficiently often. That was the only 
reason for this immense array of forces on our 
northern frontier, for the violation of Belgian neu- 
trality, for those forced marches of the German 



THE FRENCH MIRACLE 3 1 

right wing, and certainly that was well calculated. 
Even without the lure of a government to capture, 
a bank of France to rirle, Paris still remained a 
very desirable prey for the greed of those beyond 
the Rhine. Certainly the taking of Paris would not 
mean the end of France, nor the end of the war, nor 
final victory. We would still have left armies, 
money, allies and courage. But not to mention the 
great moral effect this would produce on the out- 
side world, it must be admitted that the loss of our 
capital would have made it more difficult for us to 
win that glorious peace to which we have a right. 
Still it is quite true that Paris would not have given 
up without a struggle. But Paris, aside from her 
army, was not at that time protected as she might 
have been and as she should have been ; this the Ger- 
mans knew ; if they did not, of what use were their 
armies of spies? 

A swift, violent and sudden attack, a bold and 
lucky stroke, one of those blows in which the Ger- 
mans do not count human lives, might succeed. 
And then the distant dream of a German Caesar 
would be realized ; then he would have one of those 
triumphal entries which had been denied him; and 
his army of pillagers and incendiaries would enjoy 
that orgy of blood which had so often been promised 
them. And suddenly without anyone knowing why, 
that dream for which they had sacrificed everything, 
vanished into thin air through their own fault. All 
of a sudden these daring warriors lose their daring, 
hesitate, retrace their steps and turn aside, and these 



32 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 

conquerors, of their own volition, thrust from their 
parched lips the enchanted cup from which they 
were about to drink. 

I fully realize that in their minds this was merely 
postponed, not given up altogether; I know all the 
explanations that have been given for this move- 
ment of the German right wing, whereby General 
Von Kluck, exposing his flank, instead of marching 
directly on to Paris, turned towards Meaux and 
Coulommiers. I am willing to admit that it might 
seem imprudent to him to attempt an attack on 
Paris without first of all disposing of General Mau- 
noury's army and the armies of General Joffre, which 
were after all still intact. But on the one hand, in 
a war the success of which might be a question of 
hours, this amounted to giving the capital time to 
complete and organize her defense ; and on the other 
hand, in case of a check, it meant precluding every 
possibility of a future offensive against the great city 
which was the object of the Emperor's ambition. 
And I know full well that in their foolish pride the 
Germans had no doubt about their victory. But 
that the enemy's high command should not even 
have considered the opposite possibility, that a gen- 
eral staff which even when it is sure of success, 
takes precaution against a possible reverse, should 
have been thoughtless enough to risk on one single 
throw of the dice the entire future of their Western 
campaign, that it should make the strategic mistake 
of permitting our Commander in Chief, not so much 
to resume the offensive because the offensive had 



THE FRENCH MIRACLE 33 

been decided upon long before this mistake was 
made, but to resume the offensive under the best 
possible conditions, that is what confuses me, that 
is what I do not understand — and they say that 
even our own Joffre himself does not understand it. 
Perhaps when we know the German explanation we 
shall understand it better. 

Moreover, there is no doubt that the contest to be 
waged was not only likely to be decisive but was also 
of a nature to inspire a certain amount of confidence 
in an army even less presumptuous than was the 
German army. In that astounding retreat, like one 
of Turenne's, which our Commander in Chief impos- 
ed upon the entire French army, and the execution of 
which dumbfounded the experts, our troops ran the 
risk of losing some of their most precious and incon- 
testible qualities. Subjected to unspeakable fatigue, 
how could they recover the fire, the dash, the "bite" 
of which they had at the beginning given such 
proof ? On the other hand, the French soldier does 
not like to fight and retreat at the same time ; and es- 
pecially when he does not understand the reasons 
for the movements ordered, as was often the case, 
he is likely to lose his nerve and his courage. And 
yet strangely enough nothing like this happened. 
As if in the hands of a skillful captain our national 
temperament had received a new stamp, our soldiers 
preserved all their confidence and all their dash ; and 
when on the morning of the sixth of September they 
were told, the salvation of the country was going to 
depend on their effort and that they "should at any 



34 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 

cost hold the ground gained and be slain on the spot 
rather than retreat," realizing the full meaning of 
these heroic words, happy at last to be themselves 
again, they turned upon the enemy with that legend- 
ary fury for which we have so often been glorified. 

But, however great their valor, it was to be feared 
that it would dash itself and break upon a foe al- 
together too fearful. We do not know the exact 
respective strength of the troops engaged on both 
sides, but we do know that we were numerically in- 
ferior ; and it seems that frequently we were forced 
to fight one against four or five. In the second 
place, and even though since the battle of Charleroi, 
thanks to the wonders of French manufactories, we 
had had time to fill up certain gaps in equipment, 
our armament remained inferior to that of our 
adversary: neither in mitrailleuses, nor in heavy 
artillery, nor in munition reserves, could we yet 
be compared with him. Finally, he had that self- 
confidence which comes from pride, skilfully main- 
tained and the intoxication of first victory. More 
than ever our friends were anxious. Looking at it 
rationally, they were right. 

How did the heroic valor of our army and the 
superiority of our generals and of our light artillery 
finally make our victory certain? This is easier 
to state than to explain. Mathematically, if you 
will allow me to say so, we ought to have been con- 
quered. We are forced to believe that in the art of 
war as well as in all other arts the geometrical mind 
has to give way before finesse, calculation before in- 



THE FRENCH MIRACLE 35 

tuition, reason before sentiment. This army which 
was fighting against the invader in defense of the 
native soil and the genius of France had a dif- 
ferent ideal from that which inspired that other 
army which was fighting for "honor," no doubt, 
but also and especially for the physical well-being 
of Germany — those are the very words in the Ger- 
man order of the day. This French army did not 
have on its conscience all those crimes against the 
rights of humanity which will be, in the eyes of 
history, the everlasting shame of the German army; 
let us pronounce the verdict : it had a higher moral 
standard. That is why it deserved to win. That 
is why it did win. Was it not General Nogi who 
uttered that profound thought that in every battle 
victory comes to him who is able to hold out a 
quarter of an hour longer than his foe? It would 
seem that the victors of the Marne made this their 
motto and that they wished to furnish a striking 
illustration of it. Just when generals like Mau- 
noury, Foch, Dubail with their soldiers decimated, 
exhausted, assailed on all sides by superior forces 
might have lost courage, they nevertheless persev- 
ered in their determination to keep up the offensive, 
and together with their soldiers were willing to suf- 
fer still more; and then it was that they saw the 
enemy disconcerted and less firm, break off the bat- 
tle and begin a retreat, which at more than one 
point degenerated into a rout. Let us read once 
more the stirring order of the day which General 



36 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 

Maunoury, on the day after the victory, addressed 
to the army of Paris, but which applies equally well 
to the whole French Army : 

"The Sixth Army has just sustained for five whole 
days without interruption or lull, the struggle 
against the foe in great numbers, whose success 
had up to that time heightened his morale. The 
struggle was hard; the losses on the firing line, the 
fatigue, due to loss of sleep and sometimes food, 
have surpassed the powers of imagination ; you have 
endured everything with valor, firmness and endur- 
ance which cannot properly be glorified by mere 
words." 

It was truly an epic struggle, which in the opin- 
ion of experts will remain numbered among the 
five or six great events in our military history. We 
do not know all the details, even the important ones. 
At most we are able from certain essential episodes 
to perceive the movement and rhythm of it. But 
that is sufficient to make us realize all the bravery, 
obstinacy and strategic skill displayed by the foe, 
and the heroism, patient energy and military talent 
displayed by our men. Privates and officers were 
equally worthy of admiration. The privates have 
been called upon in the name of their country to do 
more than their duty ; their reply to this, went be- 
yond the seemingly possible. As for the officers it 
is impossible to say which we must admire most in 
them, the initiative and dash with which they fought 



THE FRENCH MIRACLE 37 

the enemy directly confronting them, watching his 
every move, on the lookout for any weakness, taking 
advantage of it at the precise moment when they 
could profit by it ; or the compliant spirit and strict 
discipline with which they conformed to the in- 
structions of the Commander in Chief, scrupulously 
carrying out his plans, applying and developing his 
thought, even forestalling it and submitting to it in 
advance, in perfect harmony with 'him in method 
and intent. It was a close and fruitful collaboration 
which brought to bear on one and the same object 
all individual energy and effort and which made the 
victory of the Marne one of the most powerful col- 
lective works, the success of which is conditioned by 
the necessary utilization of many strong personal- 
ities. In our victory, what was the part played by a 
Gallieni, a Foch. a Castelnau, a Maunoury, a Du- 
bail? We do not yet know with absolute precision, 
we simply feel that it was considerable and that if 
one or the other of these commanders, to mention 
only those, had not acted as he did, instead of a de- 
cisive victory, perhaps we should have had to de- 
plore a reverse. Never before on such a vast battle- 
field had such powerful masses of men been led and 
manoeuvered with such mastery by more brilliant 
generals, more closely united and possessing such 
thorough military science. The historians of the 
future will probably say that the battle of the Marne 
was one of the masterworks of French genius. 
We rejoiced and were proud on account of this 



38 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 

complete and incontestable victory — the revenge for 
1870 — for which we have been waiting for forty- 
four years — but our pride and our joy were accom- 
panied by extreme modesty and rare selfpossession. 
I do not believe that Paris, at last safe from inva- 
sion, the danger of which she realized perfectly, dis- 
played a single extra flag. Paris did not imitate 
Berlin which after the battle of Charleroi displayed 
flags and bunting in frantic profusion. The Prus- 
sian spies who may still have been in Paris must 
have found it impossible to believe their eyes. Paris, 
nervous and throbbing Paris, was silent in her joy. 
Questioned by the civil authorities in regard to il- 
lumination to celebrate the victory, General Joffre 
replied in those admirable words, worthy of a Tur- 
enne or a Vauban : "No, our losses have been too 
great." And Paris was of the same opinion as the 
Commander in Chief. This race which had been so 
often reproached by its enemies for its swagger and 
bluster and which certainly does not dislike a little 
display looked on with smiling serenity at this sud- 
den and complete turn of fortune. Among the 
events of the last ten months perhaps not the least 
surprising has been this spontaneous transformation 
in the national temperament. This complete ab- 
sence of exaltation and that self-restraint main- 
tained in both good and bad fortune. 



THE FRENCH MIRACLE 39 



IV. 

For it was indeed during those heroic days, during 
the battle of the Marne that fortune decidedly veer- 
ed about, that hope changed camps, never again to 
abandon us. The moral superiority, which our 
troops displayed in contrast to the opposing forces 
in those bloody battles, they have not lost since; in 
fact, they are increasingly conscious of it. The 
charm was broken. That formidable German army 
which was considered invincible, because it had con- 
quered us in 1870 and which believed itself invinc- 
ible, and boasted of it, had just now been beaten be- 
yond all expectations. The offensive was broken ; 
and whatever efforts, even though at times furious, 
the German army has since made, to resume the of- 
fensive, whatever partial success it may have obtain- 
ed here and there, and which could be but tem- 
porary, whatever success it may yet obtain, it can 
neither pierce our line, nor envelop any one of our 
armies or force us to yield any considerable ground. 
On the contrary it is the German army which has 
nearly always been obliged to give way under pres- 
sure from us and which to offer greater resistance 
has inaugurated that system of trench warfare 
which has lasted for more than eight months and 
which we also have been forced to adopt. 

No system of warfare seemed a priori less adapt- 
ed to the French temperament, and no doubt be- 
yond the Rhine they were counting on this to tire 



40 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 

our patience and to force upon us what they call 
"an honorable peace" but which would have brought 
little honor to us and in any case would have been 
singularly precarious. Let us confess : We had 
some misgivings with regard to our soldiers in this 
test of an entirely new type of warfare, for which 
they apparently had been but slightly prepared, A 
French soldier does not enjoy digging up the 
ground, any more than he enjoys beating a retreat. 
Bold and brilliant offensive warfare, warfare of 
swift and skilful manoeuvres, we had up to that 
time considered his real element. How little we 
knew about the elasticity, the suppleness of the 
French character, its astonishing powers of assimila- 
tion and adaption ; in short, its plasticity ! In a 
very short time our soldiers were able to build 
trenches as ingenious and as comfortable as those of 
the Germans ; peasants, as many of them were, they 
derived a certain pleasure in handling their native 
soil ; and, however hard their life was in the frozen 
mud, in the rain, under fire, with that peaceful 
stoicism, that persistent patience, that playful, mock- 
ing, good humor which flourished in our country- 
side, they rivalled their foes in endurance, and, fin- 
ally, in the war of attrition the Germans had no 
greater success than in the other. The fact that our 
troopers regretted sometimes the old fashioned 
French type of warfare makes their abnegation still 
more touching and more admirable. 

"Six months of mole-like warfare which lacks 
the excitement of triumphal marches, waving 



THE FRENCH MIRACLE 41 

plumes, glorious battles won by fighting on the sur- 
face of the ground, marching thrilled by music and 
songs of victory! Six months which are only the 
greater and more glorious because they have torn 
from the war all her grandeur and all her chivalry ! 
Six months of war waged against wild boars in 
their lairs, whom the broad daylight and the fair 
fight, with equal arms, face to face, chest to chest, 
seemed to fill with dread." 

These were the words in which a colonel recently 
expressed himself in a private letter. We know 
from all the testimony coming to us from the front 
that this mole-like warfare has been just as pro- 
ductive as the other type of warfare in deeds of 
heroism, in unpublished acts of courage and in sub- 
blime self-sacrifice. Moreover, since the battle of 
the Marne, siege warfare has been the general 
characteristic of the struggle. We know that this 
type of warfare has admitted of exceptions in which 
much blood has been shed. More than once the 
German armies have attempted to resume the of- 
fensive on one point or another of the front. Every- 
where and always they have found before them, 
with a command always ready, troops often inferior 
in number, but quite determined to allow them- 
selves to be slain on the spot rather than retreat. 
There is nothing more honorable to the French 
army than the battles of Ypres and of the Yser 
where our soldiers stopped the drive on Calais by 
making of themselves an insurmountable barrier. 
In this war which has brought about a revival of 



42 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 

French heroism there is perhaps no more glorious 
feat than the defense of Dixmude against three Ger- 
man army corps by our six thousand marine fusil- 
iers aided by five thousand Belgians. The race of 
valiant heroes is not yet extinct and there is reason 
to believe that our enemies will speak less readily 
of the decadence of the French. 

We, however, if we do not speak of decadence, 
we may mention at least the mad presumption and 
the lack of foresight on the part of the Germans. 
From the material point of view they had prepared, 
up to the minutest detail, for a war which was to be 
a short one. Full of confidence in brute strength, 
they had entirely neglected to prepare for a war 
from the diplomatic side, and in spite of all the 
warnings loyally given, it was a terrible surprise to 
them to see England intervene in the conflict. They 
had outrageously scorned all the power of public 
opinion, leaving to victory the task of justifying 
their actions, as Maximilian Harden said; and in 
spite of their unbridled propaganda among neutrals, 
they saw little by little the public opinion of the en- 
tire world turned against them. To break all op- 
position they relied on human cowardice and sys- 
tematically spread abroad terror; the only feelings 
they have succeeded in arousing, are horror, indig- 
nation, hatred outspoken and avenging that cannot 
be stilled. They desired to wear out the adversary's 
determination and succeeded only in extending it 
beyond all known limits. Having failed in their 
brusque attack they endeavored to prolong the 



THE FRENCH MIRACLE 43 

struggle by resorting to underground warfare; and 
they failed to realize that in this way they were 
making day by day more and more formidable the 
blockade which they had been unable to avoid, and 
that they were giving to their enemies time to make 
up for their lack of previous preparation, and while 
they were wearing themselves out in a futile and 
inglorious way, the enemy had time to pile up and 
throw against them forces under the weight of 
which they could not fail to perish. The miracle 
of the French victory has as a counterpart the mar- 
vel of German stupidity. 

We, in France, as well as our allies, knew how to 
make use of the respite, German lack of prudence 
had granted us. We were all of us wrong to allow 
ourselves to be surprised by a war for which our 
enemy had spent forty-four years in preparation 
and planning, and about which we had been thinking 
not even forty-four months. In eight months al- 
most all the lost time was made up. Some day we 
shall know in detail the prodigious effort which all 
France expended in improvising, in inventing and in 
action in these ten months. Without underestimat- 
ing, in the least, all she owed to her allies, we shall 
have to confess that France was her own savior. 
At the beginning of the war we were in more than 
one respect much inferior to the foe; we are now 
at least equal to him, often superior; and yet, his 
factories and arsenals have not been idle a single 
day in the last ten months. We are told that our 
heavy artillery is his despair to-day, just as much 



44 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 

as our field artillery; and if at times our munition 
reserves have been insufficient in the past, we are 
able now to be as prodigal with our shot and 
shell as he was at the beginning against us — with- 
out the fearful prospect of copper failing us some 
day. 

The foregoing facts, which are to-day familiar to 
every sensible Frenchman, justify the lighthearted 
endurance of which our soldiers have given ample 
proof in the trenches and the patience which has 
scarcely ever deserted the civilian population dur- 
ing these ten months of war and invasion ; but 
perhaps they may not explain them entirely. Rea- 
son and common sense are ample proof of this 
every day. Endurance and patience which were 
considered German virtues were not considered up 
to this time as characteristics of the French. Must 
we see in them entirely new qualities never before 
displayed, sprung out of this great crisis through 
a sort of spontaneous creation? Or are they qual- 
ities hidden up to the present time in the obscure 
depths of the stored-up energy of our race and 
which had not yet had an opportunity to manifest 
themselves? Or are the acquired qualities which 
simply show how wonderfully easy it is for the 
French temperament to be transformed? Whether 
we choose one or the other of these hypotheses, one 
thing is certain and one fact undeniable. Poorly or 
at least insufficiently prepared for a frightful war, 
the success of which depended almost entirely on 
her powers of resistance, since she was to withstand 



THE: FRENCH MIRACLE 45 

the first shock almost alone, France did stand her 
ground ; she held out with heroic vigor, wily ten- 
acity, and unconquerable patience on which her 
friends and we ourselves perhaps at certain mo- 
ments scarcely dared to count. She has shown that 
she deserves all the admiration showered on her 
in the past and justified all the hope placed in her 
for the future. 

It is certain also that France has just lived 
through an incomparable period of her history. I 
doubt that there has been any more decisive since 
the days of Joan of Arc. In both cases the very 
life of the country was at stake: "To be or not to 
be," that was the question. The critical point in 
the fifteenth century was whether France was to 
be a vassal of England or not and in the twentieth 
century whether she was to be a vassal of Germany. 
The second crisis was of a nature to cause us to 
shudder more than the first. What humiliation, what 
a retrogression, what a downfall for a Frenchman 
of to-day to become a German ! If this monstrous 
nightmare had become a reality, what Frenchman 
would have found any joy thereafter in life? France 
so clearly felt the full seriousness of this threat 
that she rose up to her full grandeur, filled with 
indignation, loathing and fright. Germany thought 
she was going to find another Poland to dismem- 
ber; but she had to deal with a nation united, re- 
solute and under discipline, with leaders who were 
obeyed. All the strength and trickery of Germany 
were unable to break this rigid, living union of de- 



46 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 

termined minds. Once more France stood up as 
a moral being determined to live, worthy of life, a 
being whose life the world needs. For forty-four 
years France, bruised, humiliated, mutilated, fallen 
from the rank of a first-rate power, no longer spoke 
in the councils of Europe that proud and generous 
language which she was wont to speak in days gone 
by; and the world has been able to notice that the 
standard of international morality had appreciably 
declined, and that the great causes of idealism now 
seldom found a champion. After forty-four years 
the opportunity came to her to give her full true 
measure, to take once more with her old prestige 
the rank which an accidental defeat had made her 
lose and to reconquer full liberty for her civilising 
mission. France replied manfully to the call of des- 
tiny. She accepted with serene and grave con- 
fidence the wager Providence gave her. She has 
already more than half won that wager. Aided by 
her powerful and generous allies she will finally, 
while freeing herself, liberate the universe from the 
hateful and brutal yoke which has been weighing 
upon it. In that world where for a half century 
force alone has ruled she will strive, following her 
age-long tradition, to bring nearer the reign of jus- 
tice. She will cast away that frame of mind char- 
acteristic of the conquered which has been the real 
cause of her internal discord; the sacred union 
which has been her strength against the enemy must 
survive victory. 



THE FRENCH MIRACLE 47 

Oh, you young men, lying in the plains of the 
Marne, of Alsace or of Flanders, you have given 
your lives heroically for that great work of repara- 
tion, to create a larger France, a France respected by 
the world and in perfect unity in a purified Europe 
where peace reigns. This spectacle which you will 
not see we want to last in the world for ages. We 
would not be worthy of you, if hereafter by our own 
hand we tear ourselves asunder. We ought not to 
have accepted your sacrifice, if we were determined 
to make it of no avail by our obstinate persistency 
in our old and absurd quarrels. No, your blood 
shall not have been shed in vain. We have fully 
realized the austere lesson which you have taught 
us, for you died united in brotherly love. We shall 
continue, we shall complete your work. If in spite 
of grief, of misery and ruin we are proud to have 
lived through the hours we have just lived through 
it is because we are certain that France in victory 
will be able to prolong the miracle of France. 

(i) Among the many admirable letters published, I 
cannot refrain from citing here a few lines from a letter 
found on the body of Jean Chatanay, lieutenant in the 
reserves, killed at Vermelles, October 15, 1914: 

My Dear: 

I am writing this chance letter because you can never 
tell. If it reaches you, it will be because France will 
have needed me to the very end. You must not weep, be- 
cause I swear, I shall die happy, if I must give up my life 
for her. 



48 THE FRENCH MIRACLE 

My only worry is the hard situation in which you and the 
children will be left. How will you be able to provide for 
your own future and that of the children? Fortunately you 
are able to count on your old position as teacher and on 
full aid from my people. How glad I should be to know 
that some provision is to be made. 

I am not disturbed about the bringing up of the little 
girls, you will bring them up as I Avould have done myself, 
I hope that they will be able to make themselves independ- 
ent, something that I intended to do if I lived. The one 
great difficulty will be Zette, for it will be hard, if not im- 
possible for you, to live in Paris. You will kiss the dear lit- 
tle ones for their father. You will tell them that he has 
gone on a long, long journey, still loving them, thinking of 
them and protecting them from afar. I should like to have 
Cotte at least remember me, and there will be a little baby, 
a tiny baby, whom I shall not have seen. If it is a boy, my 
wish is that he become a doctor; unless, however, after this 
war France still needs officers. You will tell him when he 
has reached the age of understanding that his father gave 
up his life for a great ideal, that of our country, recon- 
stituted and strong. 

I think, I have said what is most important. Farewell, 
my dear, my love, promise me that you won't harbor ill will 
towards France, if she wanted me and all of me. Promise 
me, too, that you will console father and mother, and tell 
the little girls that their father, however far away he may 
be, will never cease to watch over them and love them. We 
shall meet again some day, united once more, I hope, with 
Him who guides our lives and has given me near you and 
through you such happiness. Poor dear one, I have not had 
time to dwell long upon our love, which nevertheless is so 
great and so strong. Farewell till we meet again, the great, 
the real meeting. Be strong. Your John. 

Jean Chatanay, former Normalien was Chief of the En- 
tomological Station at Chalons-sur-Marne. He was thirty 
years old. 



THE) FRENCH MIRACLE 49 

(2) Among all the deeds of heroism and all the epic 
words which have been reported by our soldiers, I scarcely 
know one more beautiful, more worthy of going down to 
posterity, than the following : 

In a captured trench, which was being reconstructed, a 
shower of bombs suddenly burst; ten men fell, the others 
dropped back and a score of Germans invaded the trench. 
Then, one of the wounded men got up and seizing a hand 
full of grenades, uttered this sublime cry: "Arise ye 
dead !" At his call three other wounded soldiers arose, 
and with guns, grenades and bayonets they struck down 
half of their assailants and forced the rest to flee. 

The hero of this deed is Lieutenant Pericard, author of a 
recent book : Face a Face. Souvenirs et Impressions d'un 
soldat de la Grande Guerre. Preface de Maurice Barres, 
Paris, 1916. Another volume has just appeared by the 
same author: Ceux de Verdun. Paris, 1917. 



FRENCH CIVILISATION 

Plus je vis l'etranger, plus j'aimai ma patrie. — Du Beleoy. 

Et plus je suis Francais, plus je me sens humain. — Suuy 
Prudhomme. 

To symbolise what seems to me to be the original 
and fundamental quality, the constant tradition of 
French civilisation, I should not care to seek a bet- 
ter expression than the remark of a non-commis- 
sioned Prussian officer in the novel entitled An Ser- 
vice de V Allemagne : ''Ah, sir, we really must admit 
the French have more humanity than the others." 

In literature to begin with. Is literature the ex- 
pression of society ? It is, in any case, because it is 
the least systematic, the most spontaneous expres- 
sion of the peculiar genius and instinctive tenden- 
cies of the people. 

That there is in French literature more humanity 
than in the other modern literatures would be, I 
think, the conclusion of even a superficial examina- 
tion of these various literatures. Our writers are 
not such great artists as the Italians, are less mystic- 
al than the Russians, less poetical than the Eng- 
lish, less philosophical than the Germans, less ro- 
mantic than the Spaniards but how much more hu- 
man ! It is of man they think, first of all ; it is man 
in his different moral attitudes, in the deep-seated 
movements of his nature, whom they strive to under- 



52 FRENCH CIVILISATION 

stand and describe; the questions which they treat 
are human questions, moral or social questions. 
What they have always in view is the practice of life 
— individual or collective — and, finally, it is man to 
whom they speak, the concrete, the real, the living 
man, not the exceptional, but the average man, 
whose language they speak and whose approval they 
seek. To instruct, to moralise, in a word, to hu- 
manise that is their essential purpose. We remem- 
ber what Bossuet said of the Greek poets: "Homer 
and so many other poets whose words are as pleas- 
ing as they are serious, celebrate only the arts that 
are useful to human life, breathe only the spirit of 
the public good, fatherland, society and that wonder- 
ful civic consciousness which we have explained." 
This might be the very definition of French litera- 
ture. 

Let us make this general impression clearer. Let 
us examine the two great epochs of our history, the 
Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries which we are 
in the habit of considering as opposed one to the 
other and not without reason; for, in truth, just as 
the Seventeenth Century loved order, rule and dis- 
cipline, to the same degree the Eighteenth rebelled 
against all authority, religious, intellectual and polit- 
ical. But, if, after going beyond these undeniable di- 
vergencies, we, finally, come to the bottom of the 
matter we are bound to realise that through different 
methods they affirm and pursue the same ideal. 

The French literature of the Seventeenth Century 
was passionately curious about the human soul ; that 



FRENCH CIVILISATION 53 

is, it seems, its distinctive characteristic which ex- 
plains not only its own peculiar merits, but also its 
weakness and shortcomings. It has been reproach- 
ed, for instance, with having disdained nature ; it is 
because it constantly concerned itself with man, that 
it neglected all that is not man. To see living, with 
the eyes of the soul, and to present, exactly, that 
"marvelously vain, shifting and changing creature" 
seemed to that century a spectacle which made all 
others grow pale; a task compared with which all 
others were but diversions. "It might be well," 
said Pascal, "not to penetrate too deeply into the 
opinion of Copernicus, but it is of the greatest im- 
portance to our entire life to know whether the soul 
is mortal or immortal." In like manner Racine 
might have said : "Of what importance to us is the 
setting in which the tragic story of Phaedra is un- 
folded? What interests us is Phaedra's soul, how 
she reacts against the mad passion by which she is 
possessed and obsessed, the shifting changes of her 
moral consciousness, and what physical landscape 
can compare with this paysage interieiir?" All the 
writers of the Seventeenth Century held the same 
opinion as Racine. All of them, poets, dramatists, 
orators, novelists, philosophers made the human 
heart their one object of study; all tried to encom- 
pass in their work the greatest amount of moral 
observation possible. Hence, the wealth of psychol- 
ogy in their work. "A living psychology," Taine's 
celebrated definition does not apply to every sort of 



54 FRENCH CIVILISATION 

literature, but it does apply most aptly to the lit- 
erature of the Seventeenth Century. 

It will be noticed that our great classic writers, al- 
though very penetrating, were not, however, disin- 
terested psychologists. Knowledge for the mere 
sake of knowledge, even though it were the most in- 
teresting of realities is not their ideal. Their atti- 
tude toward man is not at all that of the naturalist. 
or of the scientist, who observes, jots down facts, 
establishes laws, and, when this work is done, thinks 
his mission accomplished. They are moralists as 
much as they are psychologists. They are not satis- 
fied with studying and knowing man, they propose 
to furnish him with a rule of life; they wish him 
to be better and happier. From their long journey 
of exploration and study, they return without any 
illusion regarding human nature; they believe it 
to be profoundly wicked and perverse, a prey to 
the lowest instincts and the most wretched passions. 
To overcome these passions, to conquer these in- 
stincts, to set aglow in all this wretchedness a ray 
of idealism, of virtue and happiness, they all, or 
nearly all, see but one remedy : the acceptance of a 
religious rule of life, the submission of the whole 
inner self to a highly venerable tradition which, 
moreover, had stood the test. On this condition, 
they believe, and on this alone, can man be happy, 
at least, in so far as his moral destiny allows, and 
store up for his future life, the infinite happiness to 
which he aspires. 



FRENCH CIVILISATION 55 

The writers of the Eighteenth and those of the 
Seventeenth Century are convinced that "man de- 
sires to be happy, and the one and only thing he 
desires is to be happy and that it is impossible for 
him not to wish to be so," and similarly they con- 
sider this aspiration legitimate. But instead of be- 
lieving with Pascal and almost all his contemporar- 
ies that "happiness is neither outside of ourselves 
nor within us," but that it is "in God, and outside, 
yet within ourselves," they imagine that we would 
be perfectly happy, if we were free from all the re- 
straints which so many centuries of "superstition" 
have caused to weigh upon us. Not having studied 
man at any great length nor with any great depth, 
they believe in his native goodness, they believe in 
the all-powerfulness of reason to remedy the tem- 
porary imperfections which they discover in him : 
in a word, they believe in the progressive disappear- 
ance of evil from the world. Illusion, perhaps, but 
a generous illusion, at least, in its principle, since it 
develops from an excess of confidence in human 
nature. Having little or no faith in a future life, 
holding themselves entirely aloof from it, in any 
case, the writers of that day bring to bear on the 
present life all their thought and care ; they think 
only of directing it for the greatest happiness of hu- 
manity. Since man according to them can depend 
only on himself to improve his destiny, let him 
use all his efforts to make it more comfortable and 
agreeable. Convinced that man exists only in and 
through society and derives his value therefrom, and 



56 FRENCH CIVILISATION 

that outside society there is for him no salvation, no 
happiness — some of them became passionate apolo- 
gists of the social institution. They celebrated with- 
out ceasing its blessings and its very sanctity; they 
demanded that it should be perfected ; and they 
were prone to see in a body of good laws the sover- 
eign good which mankind might seek. Others, 
bolder or more imprudent, far from having this in- 
genuous confidence in the rules and conventions of 
society, attributed to them all the evils which fill 
with desolation the life of man. The enemy for 
them is society, they dream of a return to a so- 
called state of nature ; and already they build up 
for themselves a state of happiness which makes 
them weep with tenderness. 

Qui les fait pteurer de tendresse. 

These are, to be sure, very different tendencies, 
very different also from those current in the preced- 
ing century. But after all, it makes slight difference 
whether Bossuet has a conception of a man and life 
which bears very slight resemblance to that held 
by Voltaire or Rousseau ; all three of them, and their 
literary contemporaries are as though haunted by 
the obsession of this same problem, that of happi- 
ness. And it is this essential preoccupation which 
gives to the literary work of these two centuries, 
as to French literature in general, that accent of 
humanity which foreigners themselves are pleased 
to find there. 



FRENCH CIVILISATION 57 

Let us become more definite, if possible, and take 
a few of the great French masterpieces which have 
attracted the attention and admiration of Europe, 
and let us ask ourselves what more than any thing 
else has warranted and sealed their lasting for- 
tune. 

The Chanson de Roland is our first national mast- 
erpiece, incomplete, no doubt, somewhat crude, but 
a masterpiece nevertheless, in which, as Gaston Paris 
says, we find for the first time that divine expres- 
sion, "douce France." 

"Tere de France, mult estes dulz pais." 

This masterpiece, during the Middle Ages, travel- 
ed over all Europe. It was taken into Spain and 
Germany long before the appearance of the Niebel- 
ungen and the Romancero del Cid ; Italy, England, 
Denmark and Iceland were acquainted with it 
through numberless compilations or adaptations. 
Now, the real reason of this universal renown has 
been given by a poet, Auguste Angellier, in a work 
too little known : "What distinguishes the Chanson 
de Roland from the epics of all times," he said, "is, 
that it possesses that supreme beauty which comes 
from having exalted misfortune and being a poem of 
a noble defeat and a glorious death .... To be 
sure, the poet had no lack of glorious names, of bat- 
tles, and warriors .... I know of nothing nobler or 
more touching than that unique spectacle of a nation 
which, though it may cling to happy and glorious 



58 FRENCH CIVILISATION 

memories, is filled with enthusiasm for suffering and 
glorifies a defeat." And that is what all other peo- 
ples have felt more or less obscurely: they read, 
admired, adopted our old Chanson de Geste, because 
it offered to them the generous example of a higher 
humanity. 

Let us go down the centuries. In all our litera- 
ture there is no work more European than the Es- 
says of Montaigne. It is beyond doubt that outside 
of France as well as within her borders men have 
appreciated the incomparable grace of a style per- 
petually new. But the work would not have had 
such a unanimous and constant success if it had 
not been, before all else, as Amyot said so well of 
another book, "un cas humain represente au vif." 
"Every man," declared Montaigne, "bears in him- 
self the form of a man's condition." And it is to 
describe this "form" of general humanity that he 
analysed himself with that somewhat sly com- 
placency which some have judged to be hateful but in 
which most readers have found so much charm. For 
the first time in a work written in the "vulgar" 
tongue was seen to appear, and develop, a soul en- 
tirely described as it actually is ; men recognized 
themselves in it ; each one profited by this rich moral 
experience then placed at the service of all. Men 
admired that manner of writing "composed entirely 
of thoughts sprung from the ordinary topics of 
life." In short, "men were astonished and thrilled, 
for they had expected to see an author and they 



FRENCH CIVILISATION 59 

found a man." Never perhaps, was this famous 
dictum applied more justly. 

A few years pass : the classic literature comes into 
being and develops ; the Cid, that immortal flower of 
youth, begins the long series of great tragedies. 
Would you ask, how the pure tradition of the 
French genius is here expressed? Compare the 
Spanish drama from which Corneille derived it. In 
many respects, the Cid might be defended as an 
"adaptation" or "transformation" of the play, very 
beautiful, moreover, by Guillen de Castro. But 
how free is this adaptation, how original, this trans- 
formation ! A vast dramatic epic, variegated, pic- 
turesque, diffuse, uneven, full of details of manners 
and customs which surprise or shock the reader, 
in which improbability and bad taste flourish with 
luxuriant ingenuity; such is the Spanish work. 
Corneille abridges, reduces and concentrates. He 
unifies in a strong stage action the multiplicity of in- 
cidents and episodes. He simplifies the subject, the 
intrigue and the style ; he brings the characters near- 
er to us ; he analyzes them deeply. He eliminates 
pitilessly from his model all elements which are too 
barbarous, too local, too Spanish. He brings into 
full light the psychological and moral interest of the 
theme which he develops. In a word, by every 
means in his power, he humanizes the foreign work 
and the inner conflict which he derived from it im- 
pressed itself not only on all literary Europe but on 
the Spaniards themselves. 



60 FRENCH CIVILISATION 

"Fair as the Cid" ("Beau comme le Cid"), Cor- 
neille's contemporaries used to say. Speaking of 
Pascal's Pensees the following generation might 
say with Madame de Lafayette that, "it was a 
bad sign for those who did not enjoy that book" 
and posterity has to a large extent ratified the 
judgment of La Rochefoucauld's friend. Now, 
what is in the Pensees which even today moves us 
and touches our inmost hearts ? Strength and beauty 
of style? Depth and boldness of thought ? We are 
certainly not indifferent to these qualities. But 
how much more are we interested and enthused by 
the methodical, ardent soul which we feel throb- 
bing in these simple fragments. Here is a man — 
one of the most powerful minds the world has ever 
known — who has scrutinized with a sort of tragic 
anguish the problem of fate, and who, having found 
its solution, wishes to lead his fellowmen to the 
blessed convictions in which he himself has found 
the only peace for his anxiety. He reasons, grows 
tender, implores, inveighs, in turn. He is not a 
logician arguing; he is an apostle, almost a martyr 
confessing his faith and desirous of sharing it with 
others. "If these words please you and seem just 
to you, know that they are spoken by a man who 
went on his knees before and after to pray to the 
Being Who is infinite and indivisible, to Whom he 
submits his whole self that He may make you sub- 
ject to Himself for your own salvation and His 
glory." What an accent of serious and manly ten- 
derness ! Surely, this is one of our brothers who 



FRENCH CIVILISATION 6l 

suffers with us, who prays for us and who is ferv- 
ently searching for the truth with us ! "Would you 
have me shed forever the blood of my humanity, 
and you not give even your tears !" These wonder- 
ful words, which Pascal attributes to God, are the 
very words, we hear from the lips of Pascal him- 
self on every page of the Pensees. 

An entirely different phrase might serve as an 
epitome of the work of Moliere. "Ah! Nature! 
Nature !" cries the worthy Argan on seeing his 
daughter smile, as soon as he spoke to her of mar- 
riage ; almost all of Moliere is contained in that ex- 
clamation of admiration. Those whom he ridicules 
most gladly and with a sort of vengeful vim are 
all those who paint, disguise, mutilate, or thwart na- 
ture; bigots, pseudo-scientists, jealous husbands, 
vulgar upstarts, amorous dotards, blue-stockings 
and dandies. How much better everything would 
move along in the world, according to him, if each 
one instead of trying to check or correct it, simply 
followed his instinct. The lesson might be danger- 
ous, if, on the one hand, it were not accompanied by 
wise advice to be moderate, and if, on the other 
hand, we did not feel, beneath the scoffing and 
laughter a deep pity and great love for the poor 
creatures who are themselves the cause of their 
wretchedness. Moliere is, indeed, a very human 
genius. Even though he has less knowledge than 
others, even though he has somewhat failed to un- 
derstand the highest regions of human nature, he 
has carefully explored, described and loved the aver- 



62 FRENCH CIVILISATION 

age and moderate side of human life. The some- 
what unexpected remark which he puts into the 
mouth of his Don Juan: "Here! I give you that 
for the love of humanity," is perhaps one of the 
few rare expressions coming, not from the author, 
but the man — one of the few expressions which 
the great impersonal poet allowed himself to utter. 
At first sight, nothing resembles the work of Mol- 
iere less that I 'Esprit des Lois of Montesquieu. And 
still we already find in Moliere certain tendencies 
which are to reach broad development in the work 
of the next century, in Montesquieu as well as 
Voltaire. ''Humanity had lost her rights: M. de 
Montesquieu gave them back to her," was said of 
the Esprit des Lois and these words express ac- 
curately enough the nature of the prodigious suc- 
cess which the book had in its time. If the essential 
object of Montesquieu in writing the Esprit des 
Lois was to justify by profound reasoning the in- 
numerable laws and customs which govern the var- 
ious communities of men, to inspire in his readers a 
respect and religious awe for these venerable in- 
stitutions, to spread the ideas of liberty, toleration, 
and justice, which must make social life more com- 
fortable and agreeable; in a word, to bring every- 
thing to bear on the welfare of society, then, we 
may readily appreciate that his contemporaries were 
infinitely grateful to him for having devoted his life 
to straightening and drawing more closely the bonds 
which unite mankind. 



FRENCH CIVILISATION 63 

Almost a century later. A new world is forming. 
A new poetry has come to life, which found its pur- 
est and most sincere expression in the work of 
Lamartine. What the poetry of Lamartine meant to 
his contemporaries has never perhaps been better 
expressed than by a critic well-nigh forgotten today, 
who was never able to recall without emotion that 
day when, still a young school boy, having by chance 
bought the little volume of the Meditations he found 
therein "all the feelings of his soul, and all the pas- 
sions of his heart, all the happiness of earth and 
the delights of heaven, all the hopes of the present 
and all the anxieties of the future." And this 
opinion of Jules Janin is not confined to the French 
and foreign readers of 1820, for, between 1905 and 
1914, in nine years, then, a single Paris publisher 
sold more than forty-two thousand copies of the 
Meditations alone. We are forced to believe that 
for nearly a century men have not ceased to see and 
love in these verses of Lamartine the modern man 
in his entirety, of whom the poet, while singing of 
himself, traced for us the ideal, yet, natural, living 
image. 

May we not say as much of the novels of George 
Sand, of all our writers the one, who in flowing eleg- 
ance of style, in generosity of thought, and perhaps 
even in moral temperament reminds us most of 
Lamartine? She wrote more than one hundred 
novels inspired by widely divergent themes, which 
have enchanted, beguiled, and consoled many gen- 
erations of readers. Is it quite certain, as is some- 



64 FRENCH CIVILISATION 

times said, that they are no longer read in our day ? 
We should not be surprised at finding some weak 
parts in a work so vast. But as long as there are 
men who dream and love, they will still read these 
books, I was tempted to say poems, wherein are ex- 
pressed with almost childlike fidelity the dreams, 
often contradictory, the sentimental aspirations, the 
intellectual and social restlessness of a restless hu- 
manity. 

Mise au centre de tout comme un echo sonore. 

(In the center of all like a full sounding echo), 
the soul of George Sand was the mysterious seven 
stringed lyre of which she spoke in one of her 
books and from which only the pupil of Master Al- 
bertus could draw magnificent harmony. 

"All that is of general interest and all that inter- 
ests the mind of man," said Sainte-Beuve, "belongs 
rightfully to literature/' and is not this the very 
definition or guiding principle of his criticism ? The 
author of Port Royal and the Lundis was infinitely 
curious about all the forms and all the shades of dif- 
ference within the human soul, and from Pascal to 
Ninon de Lenclos, including Jomini, he has, you 
may say, filled up all the space. That passionate 
and ever alert curiosity for moral realities which 
makes his work something really unique in all liter- 
ature, while so many other critics have gone down in 
indifference and oblivion, is the very quality which 
gives him his ever living interest. Sainte-Beuve 
has given us a prodigious gallery of biographical 



FRENCH CIVILISATION 65 

and moral portraits, more numerous, more varied, 
more searching than those of the collection compos- 
ing the Parallel Lives. His own individual work 
was, likewise, to collect "examples of human life 
minutely dissected," and perhaps some day he may 
be called the French Plutarch. 

Thus, in the most diverse types of literature, the 
loftiest masterpieces of French literature are pre- 
cisely those which have appealed by their human 
qualities to the tender and grateful admiration of 
their contemporaries and of posterity. Humanity in 
every meaning of the word is indeed the character- 
istic of a literature which ten centuries of uninter- 
rupted productivity have not exhausted. French lit- 
erature is human because it studies man ; it is human 
because it incessantly provokes and places in the 
foreground the most important questions which in- 
terest man : his happiness, his conduct, his destiny ; 
and it is human because it is nourished, as it were, 
"on the milk of human kindness." Homo sum . . . 
It might be preferable not to recall the verse of 
Terence so often quoted, which has become com- 
monplace through constant repetition. But, how 
are we to avoid it, if it forms, so to speak, the motto 
of the French writer? 

And there, once more, is the explanation of the 
most constant characteristics, the most varied quali- 
ties of our language : clearness, simplicity, and hon- 
esty. Differing from the Englishman, or the Ger- 
man or even the Italian who so often write simply to 
satisfy themselves, to prolong their own inner dream 



66 FRENCH CIVILISATION 

of beauty or truth, the Frenchman writes only for 
others. He believes that he has something to say, 
something to say to other men. Above all, he must 
be understood. The effort which is imposed upon 
every mind wishing to communicate with another 
mind, the Frenchman takes almost entirely upon 
himself. He strives to reduce to the minimum the 
reader's task. Instead of accepting his own thought 
in its natural unorganized state as it springs from 
the depths of his conscience, he subjects it to long re- 
flection and concentration, refining it in such a way 
as to retain only the most incontestable and most 
impersonal elements. He eliminates with jealous 
care all that which, being too particular, too individ- 
ual, might possibly be too obscure and appear un- 
intelligible. Instead of clothing this residuum of 
thought in the first words which come to his mind 
he presents it to the public only after having delib- 
erately chosen from all the verbal forms which he 
has evoked and compared one after the other, not 
only the elegant, but the shortest, simplest, clearest, 
the most direct, the most persuasive, the one which 
will enter directly into the mind of his reader. 
Boileau boasted of having taught Racine how to 
write easy verses with infinite care. That art is par 
excellence the art of the French writer. That per- 
petual consideration for his public, that scrupulous 
deference to his reader, that constant need of mak- 
ing his task easier, that touching desire to teach and 
not weary, to entertain and not becloud, to moralize 
but not to cross him, to be a discreet, kindly friend 



FRENCH CIVILISATION 67 

to him, without showing any haughtiness, this sort of 
spiritual charity widely and generously practiced: 
all this has created in our language a tradition to 
which they are but few who are not faithful. It 
is to this tradition that we owe the wide diffusion of 
our language as well as of our spirit. Other peo- 
ples speak less trippingly than formerly of "the un- 
iversality of the French tongue,'' but they continue 
to see in it — as quite recently the German author 
of J' accuse — the ideal language of diplomacy and in- 
ternational relations, and when a few years ago a 
Russian claimed for the French language the honor 
of being "the auxiliary language of the European 
group of the civilised world," was not this equival- 
ent to recognizing in it the very language of civilised 
humanity ? 

II. 

However fruitful and brilliant a literature may be, 
it is not the only, nor even the most important, 
factor in a civilisation ; religion and philosophy are 
other factors more powerful and more intimate; 
and even though the genius of a race expresses itself 
perhaps less clearly in these more impersonal forms 
of national activity, it reveals itself nevertheless to 
the attention of the careful observer. 

To appreciate fully what constitutes the peculiar 
originality of French philosophy, one has but to 
think of the philosophy of a neighboring people, only 
recently, still very arrogant, whose baneful deeds 



68 FRENCH CIVILISATION 

we are beginning to suspect. One could not con- 
ceive of a more striking contrast, and first of all, 
with respect to the language. Whereas, in Ger- 
many, the philosophers — with the exception of 
Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, who were brought up 
on our literature — manufacture a language barbar- 
ous, pedantic, all abristle with new words and enig- 
matic expressions, our French philosophers consider 
it a glory and a duty to speak and write the com- 
mon language of all, to make their appeal not to 
scholastic pedants but to the average cultivated man. 
They are for the most part good, indeed excellent, 
at times, even great writers. If Renouvier and es- 
pecially Auguste Comte write, let us confess, rather 
poorly, if Descartes is not the master of the language 
which we have at times hailed him as being, Male- 
branche is certainly a very remarkable writer and 
though w 7 e may be unwilling to place among the 
pure philosophers Voltaire and Rousseau, Lamen- 
nais, Taine or Renan, can we find in any language a 
greater writer than Pascal? "Good common sense," 
said Descartes, — and with these words Le Discours 
de la Methode begins, "is that one thing in this 
world which is most evenly distributed." This belief 
all our philosophers have shared with Descartes. 
They do not divide the world into two parts : name- 
ly, philosophers and others — that is, the numberless 
mob of poor creatures who do not "think." In their 
opinion, every human being is capable of reflection, 
of "thought," consequently, of receiving and judg- 
ing the truth. And it is to the universal judgment 



FRENCH CIVILISATION 69 

of cultivated minds that they submit the results of 
their speculations upon the ensemble and essence of 
things. 

Hence, whereas in other countries philosophy re- 
mains the private domain of certain specialists, 
even "professionals," with us, although we are 
not without our pure philosophers, philosophy 
is more a part of life, and penetrates all the 
domains of intellectual activity. It penetrates 
literature. Not a few of our writers, had they so 
wished, might have been specialists in pure philos- 
ophy; there is even one of them, Taine, who was 
a litterateur and a great writer only in spite of 
himself. More than one counts among his literary 
achievements, works of philosophy; for instance, 
Renan, Lamennais, Voltaire and Bossuet. From the 
works of all or nearly all of them, without mention- 
ing purely philosophical ideas which they have sown 
therein, we may deduce without being arbitrary a 
"philosophy," a general view of the universe and of 
man, of life and of destiny, which is very coherent 
and at times very explicit. Without any desire cer- 
tainly to transform Corneille, Racine, or Moliere 
into profound metaphysicians, we should be wrong 
to see in these three poets only simple rhymesters 
and phrase-makers; they have "thought" just as 
vigorously as many others who "make a trade" of 
philosophy. Racine's psychology is exactly that 
which is found in the Pensees of Pascal, just as Cor- 
neille's psychology resembles in every feature that 



70 FRKNCH CIVILISATION 

found in Descartes' Traite des Passions. And not 
only Gassendi but perhaps Spinoza even would re- 
cognize himself in the words of Moliere. "Man," 
wrote Spinoza, "is not in nature as a state within 
a state, but, as a part in a whole," and if Moliere 
did not say this, did he not at least suggest it ? 

Philosophy with us penetrates science just as 
deeply. Not only is it a part of the tradition in 
France, much more than elsewhere, that philosoph- 
ers by profession must have a thorough and wide 
training in science, but, besides, our greatest phil- 
osophers have been more than simple men of sci- 
ence, they have been great scientists, as for instance. 
Descartes, Pascal, Auguste Comte, Cournot, Claude 
Bernard, Henri Poincare. French philosophy and 
science have both profited equally from this mutual 
interpenetration. On the one hand, our philosoph- 
ers instead of building in the clouds, have pre- 
served, even in metaphysics, the excellent habits of 
mind which are engendered and maintained by the 
discipline of science for they have clung to reality, 
Method and precision were not virtues foreign to 
them ; when they speculated on nature and on sci- 
ence, they started from positive concrete notions 
which they knew by more than mere hearsay. On 
the other hand, our scientists, on leaving their lab- 
oratories and mingling with the world of general 
ideas, learned to think and to judge their science; 
they were able to give it its proper place in the 
general scheme of things and of human knowledge ; 



FRENCH CIVILISATION 7 1 

they knew its exact bearing, and at the same time 
they touched its limits. They saw clearly that sci- 
ence was not all of man, and, that in man even, and 
outside of man, many realities were beyond its 
grasp. In short, they firmly repudiated near sci- 
ence (scientisme) , that gross doctrine held by half- 
scientists or half-philosophers which has come to 
us from Germany and which consists in making 
positive science the only type of knowledge and the 
only rule of action. Our philosophers have main- 
tained the rational cult of science, and this is well; 
they have avoided making of it a religion or a 
superstition, and this is better still. By freeing sci- 
ence from this servile superstition, they have done 
the human mind a service, the effects of which we 
are only beginning to realize. 

The tradition of French philosophy has still an- 
other characteristic. It loaths rigid abstract sys- 
tems, "palaces of ideas," which enchant under other 
skies the dialectic imagination. Not, of course, that 
we are incapable of that. Descartes, that "hero of 
modern thought,'' as Hegel called him, is as con- 
structive a genius as Kant ; and Malebranche has no 
reason to envy Spinoza, nor Auguste Comte, 
Hegel. But in the French systems we find less of 
the arbitrary and a keener and more constant desire 
to keep close to reality and to take it as a model; 
moreover, the systems of our philosophers are not 
vast prisons in which they shut themselves up, for- 
bidding themselves even to leave or look outside. 
Even though they may not contradict themselves, 



72 FRENCH CIVILISATION 

they do sometimes at least try other paths, some- 
what divergent, they follow points of view, they at- 
tempt modes of thought of which the general atti- 
tude of their minds gave no indication. Take Des- 
cartes, for example, he is considered, and with rea- 
son, the father of modern rationalism and is be- 
lieved to have brought about the triumph of a me- 
chanistic conception of the world which long sur- 
vived him; and all that is quite true. But 
there is in Descartes more than one page that has a 
different ring; and the more recent philosophies of 
liberty, voluntary effort, intuition which are ordinar- 
ily traced back, and very justly, to Pascal, may find 
their origin also in the author of the Discours de la 
Methode. And the case of Descartes is not the only 
one in our literature. 

The fact is that most of our philosophers, just as 
they are unwilling to leave the solid ground of scien- 
tific observation, are equally unwilling to leave the 
solid ground of moral reality. Whatever may be 
their instinctive preference for adventure in meta- 
physics, they are at times able to restrain it so as 
to devote themselves to more modest investigation in 
psychology or moral philosophy. "What is thought 
on the planet Sinus," as Renan said, though it 
may not be absolutely indifferent to them, is, how- 
ever, not their sole preoccupation. It is really in 
man that they are especially interested and they 
are attracted above all by human problems. The hu- 
man soul is for them an enigma more disturbing 
and useful to solve than all the enigmas of the uni- 



FRKNCH CIVILISATION 73 

verse. And to this they always return. Now, by 
studying unceasingly this shifting and fleeting reality 
they have formed of truth an idea more flexible, 
less rigid, in a word, more living, than the idea, the 
rough outline of which has been formed in other 
lands by pure logicians. The theories of our philos- 
ophers remain open for later observation and re- 
search. They do not presume to enclose the abso- 
lute therein. They leave to others the task of recti- 
fying, of completing, of enriching their personal 
conceptions ; and philosophy thus understood and 
practiced has something of the free motion and 
wave-like continuity of life. Since they all have the 
feeling that the human soul is something of in- 
finite complexity and variety, the idea would never 
occur to them to proclaim any one national type 
of humanity as superior to all others and propose 
that it be universally admired and obeyed. On the 
contrary it is the coexistence of multiple forms of 
mind, each having its inalienable right to existence 
that they perceive to be the essential condition of all 
progress. French philosophy has always believed 
in freedom and never could it be resigned to make 
an apology of despotism; that is one of its most 
constant characteristics; neither Hobbes nor Hegel 
was a Frenchman, nor Nietzche. Nothing is more 
foreign to the whole French spirit than the barbar- 
ous and immoral conception of the ''superman." To 
be a man; to be a man as completely, as deeply, as 
possible ; not to emphasize, not to over-emphasize 
human nature and, furthermore, not to degrade it ; 



74 French civilisation 

to respect it in one's self and in others; to accept its 
limitations, develop its powers and reconcile its con- 
trasts : such is the ideal which, from all time, French 
philosophy has made its own and spread through- 
out the world. Others are more filled with mad 
pride — ; but is there any other that is more wise 
and more generous ? 

It would be simplifying things too much to define 
religion as the philosophy of the humble folk. But 
it is certain that the humble have no other, and made 
as it is for the humble as well as for the expert, 
religion translates in a more spontaneous and more 
complete manner than pure philosophy the aspira- 
tions of an entire people. This law so strongly es- 
tablished by Fustel de Coulanges is verified in our 
own history. Through many vicissitudes Catholic- 
ism has remained our national religion. And we are 
forced to believe that between Catholicism and the 
French genius, there was a sort of "pre-established 
harmony." because, from the moment when Roman 
Gaul became entirely Christian, she has shown her- 
self to be wonderfully faithful to the Church. When 
the Barbarians who invaded the land, Burgundians 
or Visigoths, were inclined to Arianism, she was 
able to escape this heresy. More than that, it is 
around the Catholic idea that national unity was 
constituted, so to speak. If Clovis had become an 
Arian, would he have been so easily accepted as 
king of France? In any case, by accepting Cathol- 
icism he indicated that he had a sure premonition of 
our national destiny ; and after him, Charles Martel 



FRENCH CIVILISATION 75 

and Charlemagne would not have succeeded in 
founding a new dynasty, if they had not been above 
all the champions of Catholicity. The role of the 
Church as a civilising and moral influence was no- 
where more visible or more universally recognized 
than in France during the Middle Ages ; and France 
during the Middle Ages rendered in her turn such 
admirable service to Catholicism that she won, we 
know, the title "Eldest Daughter of the Church," 
and her kings, that of "most Christian kings." 
The France of the Crusades, the France of the 
Gothic cathedrals, the France of St. Louis was for 
long centuries the great Catholic power. In the Six- 
teenth Century when a formidable religious revolu- 
tion was overturning Europe, it was to the tradi- 
tional interpretation of Christianity that the land of 
Calvin finally rallied and it is this interpretation that 
she imposed on the new line of kings. Finally, in 
our own day when "religions based on authority," 
are so fiercely attacked, good judges opine that no- 
where, at least, in the realm of ideas and of the in- 
ner life, is Catholicism as living and as active as it 
is among us. It is the France of today which fur- 
nishes the Church with the greatest number of her 
missionaries, two-thirds of the total number; and 
this simple fact tells more than all abstract consider- 
ations. 

But France is not the only Catholic nation ; Spain 
and Italy, for instance, might also claim the title. 
French Catholicism, however, does not resemble 
Italian or Spanish Catholicism. It is to be sure the 



76 FRENCH CIVILISATION 

same system of dogmas or beliefs, but each great 
people puts its imprint on them and develops one 
aspect rather than another, according to the disposi- 
tions of its particular genius. Spain has been es- 
pecially attracted by the mystical side of Catholic- 
ism, the Italians by the artistic and poetic. France 
sees in religion something else and something more 
than a beautiful poem which men take for truth 
( e 'un beau poeme tenu pour vrai,") as Taine said, 
or a means of exalting, purifying, rendering sub- 
lime the individual soul. Not that France fails to 
recognize the legitimacy of this two-fold point of 
view, for, she is the land of Pascal and of Chateau- 
briand. But, in general, she prefers the point of 
view held by Bossuet, which is nevertheless some- 
what different. In the eyes of the author of the 
Variations, Catholicism is above all a social bond 
{lien social). Not only does it unite men of one 
generation, one to the other, by regulating their 
mutual relations, prescribing one and the same ideal, 
and that unity which comes from one and the same 
belief, but it also links the present with the past and 
the future, through dogma of the Communion of 
Saints ; and thus, this grouping together of the living 
and the dead which we call our country (patrie) in- 
stead of being a simple verbal expression becomes 
the most living of realities. And there is more to 
be said on this point. Catholicism thus conceived 
does not allow itself to be shut up within national 
boundaries ; its dream is the brotherhood of man ; it 
works for the union of souls through the unification 



FRENCH CIVILISATION 77 

of beliefs; beyond racial differences, it wishes to 
build the City of God, which is to bring together all 
human consciences and of which "Christendom," 
during the Middle Ages was but a very imperfect 
model. Even though this conception of Catholicism 
which has its support in the most authentic ortho- 
doxy, is not peculiar to the French, it is in France, 
however, that it met with the greatest favor and 
that it has been not only adopted but practiced 
most consistently. The Frenchman is the least in- 
dividualistic of men, he is a born apostle; he loves 
to think in communion with other men, to propagate 
his ideas, to preach, to convert. Catholicism en- 
couraged and utilized these deep instincts of the 
race. A religion the excellency of which did not be- 
tray itself in the perfecting of social life, would 
soon be considered in France as a false religion. 

And this is so truly the case, that French irre- 
ligion, in its struggle against Catholicism, has never 
developed any other objection nor found any other 
way to express it. With what did Voltaire and the 
Encyclopedists reproach the religion of Pascal and 
Bossuet ? With being contrary to human nature, to 
general civilisation, to the ''progress of enlight- 
enment," to the very laws of society. They reproach- 
ed, in so many words, good Christians with being 
poor citizens. "How," said Montesquieu, "restrain 
by law a man who believes that he is certain that the 
greatest punishment that the courts can inflict upon 
him will last but for a moment and open for him 
happiness." Rebellious to all asceticism, not realiz- 



78 FRENCH CIVILISATION 

ing that the tendencies of human nature are not all 
equally good, and that it is good moral and social 
hygiene to restrain and suppress some of them in 
order to permit others to develop more freely, poor 
psychologists and mediocre historians, "our philos- 
ophers," dodged the evidence: they were unwilling 
to recognize the innumerable services which Catho- 
licism had rendered to civilisation in Europe, of 
which it is one of the essential factors; they denied 
its social value and moralizing action. But it is 
curious to note that it is in the very name of "hu- 
manity" — a humanity which Catholicism had taught 
them to love — that they fought against Catholicism ; 
resembling in this, as La Bruyere might have said, 
"those sturdy children who have been carefully nur- 
tured and, then, turning on their nurse, beat her," 
("ces enfants drus et forts d'un bon lait qui battent 
leur nourrice"). 

The truth of history, we know, is quite different 
and Chateaubriand in his Genie du Christianisme 
had no great difficulty in reestablishing it against 
the last Encyclopedists. Certainly, Christianity has 
not transformed or renewed entirely human nature 
and only too frequently has religion itself served as 
a pretext for an outburst of passion, in which there 
was absolutely nothing Christian. But, if we invest- 
igate carefully in its origin all the progress of a 
social or moral nature of which we are justly proud, 
how much of it must we not attribute to Christian 
influence? If we were able by one stroke of the pen 
to strike out what Taine called "the contribution of 



FRENCH CIVILISATION 79 

Christianity in our modern society," we should be 
dismayed at the sight which the world and history 
would offer to our gaze: "a den of thieves or a 
brothel," to quote Taine once more. That is what 
has almost always been clearly felt in France. "La 
plus-value humaine," to quote the rather odd but 
expressive words of Alexandre Dumas fils — that is 
what French Catholicism has always had in view. 
It is more taken with action than with contempla- 
tion, and with social action more than with individ- 
ual perfection; or rather individual perfection in 
place of being confined to itself and absorbed in 
itself, always resolves itself with us into social ac- 
tion. Subtle theological discussions, minute research 
in exegesis, over-refinement of complicated devotion 
are scarcely our specialty. A rugged, good common 
sense which goes straight to the point, a simple faith 
not without its shades of difference but without any 
superfluities, a very keen appreciation of moral real- 
ities, a great enthusiasm for the apostolate, and a 
real need of communicating one's belief, and above 
all, perhaps, a desire for brotherhood and a sort of 
passion for charity: these it would seem are the 
principal characteristics of French Catholicism from 
St. Martin to St. Louis and from Bossuet to La- 
cordaire. 

And these also are the features which characterize 
in religious history French holiness. For there is 
a French holiness, just as there is an Italian and a 
Spanish holiness. Although the saints belong to 
the Church Universal, they belong also to their 



80 FRENCH CIVILISATION 

country of origin, the peculiar genius and deep 
thought of which they express in their own manner. 
Our French saints do not resemble those of other 
nations; they have in common, as it were, a family 
resemblance which is their distinguishing mark. 
However ardent and pure their inner life may be, it 
I does not turn them away from practical action; on 
the contrary it closely unites them in full harmony 
of soul with that humanity which they love and 
whose salvation, even temporal, they passionately 
desire. St. Bernard was, as it were, the representa- 
tive of the Papacy in his day. St. Louis was the 
best, most generously active, most just and most 
scrupulously devoted, and most human of all kings. 
The more we study the history of Joan of Arc, the 
more we are impressed by her luminous good sense, 
by what I should like to call her bold realism. It is 
by quite different virtues and by other dominant 
traits that St. Theresa, the great Spanish saint and 
"the poor man" of Assisi, the great Italian saint 
appeal to our admiration. We shall not hesitate 
to give them our admiration, but we shall reserve a 
large share of it also for him who through his 
shrewd and firm reasoning, his prodigious activity, 
his passionate love for the humble, his inexhaustible 
charity deserves to be greeted as our great French 
saint — Saint Vincent de Paul. 



FRENCH CIVILISATION 8l 



III. 



The genius of a race is reflected in its religion as 
well as in its philosophy and literature, but it im- 
presses itself upon the world and is justified only by 
the grandeur and continuity of its historical role. 
Were it not for Marathon and Salamis, Greek civil- 
isation would not be for us all that it is today and 
Homer, Aristotle, and the Parthenon would not 
have in our eyes all their meaning and all their 
worth. 

Very early and as though she felt called to a high 
destiny, France became conscious of the fact that 
she was a moral person, and she strove to realize her 
national unity. Her first king, Clovis, knew intu- 
itively what this great country might become over 
which he was called upon to rule; he had a very 
clear conception of its geographical limits, made 
every effort to control and amalgamate under his 
authority the different peoples who had successively 
established themselves there and to defend it against 
the new invasions ; finally, he made Paris his cap- 
ital. At his death there was a real France. But the 
France of Clovis was quickly dismembered and it 
required long centuries and long trials to reestab- 
lish it. That was particularly the patient and per- 
sistent task of the third race of our kings. Through 
many vicissitudes, relying, moreover, on public senti- 
ment, they were obliged to reconquer France from 
innumerable petty French kings and powerful 
neighbors who were always eagerly on the watch 



82 FRENCH CIVILISATION 

for our weaknesses and kept their eyes ever fasten- 
ed on the rich booty which they found on our soil. 
And the result of their bravery, of their policy and 
of their perseverance was such that at the end of the 
Middle Ages, "La douce France*' had become a 
political reality — the first of the states of Modern 
Europe whose unity is an accomplished fact. A 
unity, still imperfect, no doubt, since at the present 
time, the dream of our ancient Monarchy, is not 
realized, for we have not yet attained our natural 
boundaries, although this dream may be realized to- 
morrow. It is, nevertheless, a unity solid and en- 
during which may indeed increase but whose found- 
ations are already firmly laid. 

To establish this unity for such a long time pre- 
carious and always threatened, many wars were ne- 
cessary, long and sometimes endless wars. France 
instinctively, no doubt, since she was the daughter 
of Gaul, but from necessity, also, has been a great 
military nation. She has known and practiced all 
kinds of warfare; wars of defense and wars of 
conquest, wars for the balance of power, wars of 
expansion, wars for hegemony and wars of propa- 
ganda. But it is to be noticed that almost all the 
wars that France has provoked or sustained were 
really defensive wars, or if you prefer, wars for 
national unity. The Italian wars, the constantly re- 
curring wars against the House of Austria, the ma- 
jority even of the wars of Louis XIV had no other 
object in view, for it was a question, first of all. 
of completing or consolidating our unity, of driving 



FRENCH CIVILISATION 83 

far from our frontiers an enemy too powerful and 
ambitious, of forestalling his proud plans, and of re- 
ducing him to inactivity or powerlessness. It is not 
even certain that preoccupations of this kind were 
not in the mind of Napoleon and that he always and 
everywhere allowed himself to be drawn on by the 
mere spirit of conquest and domination ; in any case, 
his armies had the conviction, often illusory, that 
they were fighting against the "tyrants'' and strug- 
gling for the liberty of the world. Moreover, as a 
matter of fact, was not the result of the revolution- 
ary and imperial wars the awakening of the various 
national consciences and the encouragement of their 
aspirations? And did not Napoleon himself begin 
the unification of Germany? 

Thus, even when France practiced with some de- 
gree of intemperance "sacred selfishness," she had 
difficulty in continuing in that direction. We must 
insist on that, for it is an essential characteristic of 
her history. The majority of the wars which she 
undertook in order to consummate or defend her na- 
tional unity had at the same time as their object to 
guarantee and to consolidate the balance of power 
in Europe. The traditional policy of France has 
ever been, not to permit any one power to acquire 
the hegemony of Europe, and thus to bring be- 
neath its despotic yoke other weaker states, to desire 
independence for others as she desires it for her- 
self, to establish between the respective forces and 
ambitions of the diverse peoples a stable equilibrium, 
to check them one by the other, to assure to them all 



84 FRENCH CIVILISATION 

the free development of their own genius, to oppose 
any encroachment, any usurpation, and all this not 
only for love of peace but also for love of justice. 
This policy was certainly to her advantage but she 
was not the only one to benefit by it, and, in the 
main, rare are the victories of France which have 
not been to some degree victories in the interest of 
Europe. Let us suppose that Philip Augustus had 
not been victorious at Bouvines, the future of 
Europe would have been as profoundly modified as 
the future of France herself. If Joan of Arc had 
not been successful in her mission, France would 
have become English and, once more, the cause of 
the freedom of Europe would have been singularly 
compromised. If France struggled so much against 
the House of Spain and the House of- Austria, it 
was no doubt because such a powerful empire con- 
stituted for her a constant danger; but, the danger 
was scarcely less great for the other nations of Eu- 
rope; and the treaty of Westphalia, while it con- 
firmed the victory of French diplomacy and arms 
was for nearly two hundred years the safeguard of 
the rights of European states. France was not sat- 
isfied with assuring to other peoples the right to ex- 
istence ; with her blood and treasure she helped sev- 
eral nationalities in their erTorts to establish them- 
selves. The unification of Italy is her work; and 
even though it may be said that the cession of Savoy 
and the comte of Nice was liberal pay for our per- 
sonal sacrifices, what material profit did we gain 
from our intervention in the American war of Tn- 



FRENCH CIVILISATION 85 

dependence and the war of Greek Independence? 
Generally very careful to conciliate her national in- 
terests with the general interests, European or hu- 
man (this is certainly the ideal of the great French 
wars), France more than any other nation is capable 
of abandoning all self-interest, of consecrating her- 
self to the interests of others, and as soon as the 
great ideals of justice and humanity are at stake, 
no one has ever appealed in vain to her generosity. 
We should be much mistaken, were we to admit 
on the assertion of some theorists and certain 
foreigners that our colonial expeditions are a stain 
on the usual idealism of our foreign policy. First 
of all, we forget that the colonial wars are rather 
far from being wars of mere conquest. Whenever 
they are not brought about by anxiety for the na- 
tional security, as, for instance, the wars in Algeria 
and Tunis, they have been brought about by serious 
economic and political reasons. A great power, 
which the distribution of world territory would 
leave unmoved, and which would refrain from par- 
ticipating in it, would soon see itself outdistanced by 
its rivals, and its prestige and material prosperity 
would promptly decrease ; it would remain station- 
ary, while others would develop and grow ; it would 
thereby consent to a shifting of the balance of power 
of which one day or another it might become the 
victim. Colonial wars are often wars of national 
interest. On the other hand, they are not necessar- 
ily unjust or immoral wars; they become so, only 
the moment they have as their object the enslave- 



86 FRENCH CIVILISATION 

ment of peoples of equal culture. Now, this is not 
our case. Without having the slightest desire to 
divide men into inferior and superior races, we may 
rightly believe that the tribes in the Congo or in 
Madagascar have remained for the present at least 
in an inferior stage of civilisation. It would be a 
strange paradox to give the same weight to their 
notion of what native land means as to that of the 
natives of Alsace-Lorraine. Besides, it is not a 
question of reducing them to slavery, but of taking 
them under our guardianship, of watching carefully 
over their real interests, of teaching them the value 
of a regular social life ; in short, it is a question of 
raising them little by little to our own plane. We 
repay them generously in moral and social help for 
the wealth which we take from their soil. In a 
word, we civilise them, we make them more human, 
we attach them gradually to a sort of life which we 
consider superior ; we do not exploit them. At least, 
it is always in this manner that we, in France, 
have understood colonization ; and we feel that this 
conception is sufficiently altruistic to justify the ex- 
peditions and wars which we have undertaken to 
realize it. It is enough for the moment to cast a 
glance on our work in Algeria, in Tunis and in 
Morocco, to demonstrate that the reality of the 
facts, in the matter of colonial activity, corresponds 
very exactly to that ideal which we have constantly 
held. 

France more than any other modern nation, per- 
haps, has the right to glory in this ideal which con- 



FRENCH CIVILISATION 87 

sists in not separating her cause from that of civil- 
isation itself; has she not caused it to triumph, by 
aid of arms, on more than one field of battle? She 
was not yet France when already on the fields about 
Chalons she stopped, as did Athens in days of yore 
at Marathon, the most formidable horde that could 
have threatened our western civilisation. Had At- 
tila won, modern Europe would not alone have been 
submerged and annihilated by the brutally destruc- 
tive invasion ; but also all the sentiments, traditions 
and ideas which Greece and Rome had bequeathed 
us. Two centuries later, Christian civilisation is 
again in peril through the triumphant invasions of 
the Saracen and France again on the field of Poit- 
iers saved the world from the yoke of Islam. And 
finally, when a few months ago, under the onrush of 
the new Barbarians, all that forms the adornment, 
moral refinement and pride of our souls today was 
threatened with eternal destruction, France once 
more on the historic plains of the Marne broke the 
drive of the German hordes and forced them to re- 
treat. An English writer said eloquently and con- 
cisely: "It is the lofty and hard fate of that country 
to be the guardian nation" — the guardian of this 
treasure of humanity, of wisdom, and of experience 
and morality which we call civilisation. 

That is why France, more than any other na- 
tion, loves to battle for ideas. The Crusades, those 
heroic deeds of Christian idealism, are not an ex- 
clusively French work; but, it was in France that 
they had their origin ; it was a French monk, it was 



88 FRENCH CIVILISATION 

a French Pope who preached the first Crusade; it 
was a French king who led the last two and they 
were Frenchmen who participated most generously 
in them. The Frenchman never fights so well as 
when he feels that his cause surpasses him and that 
his material interest is not alone at stake. To be 
sure, he loves his own country and in order to de- 
fend his native soil he consents to the heaviest and 
most bloody sacrifices; but he is happy at the 
thought that these sacrifices are of profit to others 
than himself and his countrymen. When these sac- 
rifices are demanded of him not only for his country 
but for the triumph of one of those great and gen- 
erous ideas, humanity, religion, justice, civilisation, 
liberty, which raise man above himself and merge 
with his ephemeral self something of the eternal 
laws, then he offers his life with that sort of mystic 
ardor which makes him so terrible on the fields of 
battle. The really French wars, in truth, are more 
or less Crusades, and this is manifest at the present 
moment. The Wars of the Revolution were wars 
of national defense and at the same time wars to 
spread revolutionary doctrine. The Volunteers of 
1792 believed with touching sincerity that they 
were the missionaries of liberty in the world. Did 
not the Legislative Assembly declare that France 
"was not undertaking the war for conquest," and 
later on, after Jemmapes what did the Convention 
say? "The National Convention declares in the 
name of the French nation that it will bring aid and 
brotherhood to all the peoples who wish to recover 



FRENCH CIVILISATION 89 

their liberty." They speak of liberty instead of 
speaking of the "tomb of Christ" — the spirit, how- 
ever, has not changed at all. 

There is, therefore, no history less narrowly na- 
tional than the history of France. That is true even 
of the history of her internal development. France 
radiates her influence outside of her boundaries 
through her spirit and example, even when she ap- 
pears to be absorbed solely in herself. First among 
the nations of feudal Europe she conceived the re- 
gime of a strongly centralized monarchy; and this 
regime, no sooner inaugurated among us became im- 
mediately the ideal model towards which all other 
great states turned. We in France have never sought 
to imitate Spain, Russia, or Germany. But during 
the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, there is 
not a single German princeling who did not attempt 
to copy Louis XIV. England, which was to be our 
inspiration so frequently in later years, fell, as all 
Europe of that time did, under the influence of the 
Great King. She forgot, if not her language, at 
least, her literature, and Corneille and Racine were 
more admired in London than Shakespeare. When 
in the next century, we began to break away from a 
regime the benefits of which we had exhausted, this 
same regime was still flourishing at Berlin and St. 
Petersburg: Frederick II and Peter the Great were 
disciples of Louis XIV. 

In France, we are accustomed to consider the 
Revolution of 1789 as one of the great events of 
history, of an importance equal to that of the Re- 



90 FRKNCH CIVIUSATION 

formation. But already, at a very early date that 
same opinion prevailed in foreign lands and neither 
Kant nor Burke nor Goethe nor Joseph de Maistre, 
as we know, were under any illusion as to its signifi- 
cance. Now, the fact that a revolution purely 
French, and one which at the beginning had as its 
sole purpose to remedy the abuses of the old regime 
and to give a constitution to the country, should 
have produced this reaction, first of all, in the mind 
and, later, in the institutions of modern Europe — 
that is, truly, something unique in the history of the 
world. Other nations have had revolutions ; such as 
England, America, and Russia. These revolutions 
remained national revolutions, thoroughly local, con- 
sequently ; and their general importance was scarce- 
ly greater than that of our Fronde. The French 
Revolution was nothing like this. From the begin- 
ning, it passed beyond the frontiers of the land of 
its origin. It was not only the Frenchman of the 
Eighteenth Century whom it wished to free, it was 
all mankind ; and it was less than two months after 
the fall of the Bastille that the Constituant Assembly 
voted the famous declaration of the Rights of Man 
and of the Citizen, August 27, 1789. An historian, 
Edgar Ouinet, would have us see in this manifesto, 
"the gospel of a new era," and that may be an ex- 
aggeration ; because, after all, it was useless for the 
National Assembly to place itself "in the presence 
and under the auspices of the Supreme Being," for 
there is nothing less religious than the Declaration 
and if it is a gospel, it is a purely political gospel. 



FRENCH CIVILISATION 9 1 

On the other hand, however, it cannot be denied that 
these few pages changed the political and social 
mentality of Europe, at least, in those countries in 
Europe into which the French armies penetrated. 
Nor can it be denied that the Revolution in the 
course of its development progressed in the manner 
of a real religion. Absolutist Europe still half 
feudal, realized clearly the peril with which it was 
threatened by the French Revolution. And when all 
Europe rose up against the land of the Declaration 
of the Rights of Man, it was no doubt because she 
hoped and expected to share the spoils ; but, it was 
also principally because she had determined to crush 
the subversive nation, guilty of having invented and 
propagated a pernicious and anarchistic doctrine. 
More even than wars of self-interest the wars of the 
Revolution were wars of principles and this is what 
gave them particularly, in so far as they concerned 
the French, their undeniable grandeur. 

But the French Revolution continued and pro- 
gressed. Our two Revolutions of 1830 and 1848, 
also, had an echo throughout Europe and they pro- 
voked nearly everywhere revolutionary movements 
and brought about the birth of liberal constitutions. 
This undoubtedly means that the Declaration of the 
Rights was not a mere accident in our national his- 
tory and all nations in order to be free and realize 
their deepest aspirations were awaiting the word 
from France which meant freedom for them. Gesta 
Dei per Francos! There was a time when we 
scarcely dared recall these old familiar words which 



92 FRENCH CIVILISATION 

sometimes, we must admit, had too easily nattered 
our pride. Still, we must fully recognize that these 
words are not absolutely illusory, that France in the 
history of the world has been the source of great 
things and that those who think she was created to 
try on herself the experiments from which the other 
nations could profit, are perhaps not entirely wrong. 
The other nations ! Yes, they have envied us, 
fought us and railed at us, they have not always 
done us justice; they have not always realized what 
we had done for them; but they have never hated 
us, and more than once they have strongly felt 
"what France meant to the world." When towards 
the end of August, 1914, the German army was ad- 
vancing by forced marches on Paris, when, for an 
instant, one might have been justified in believing 
in the success of the Pan-German plan, and in the 
dismemberment if not in the total disappearance of 
France, there was in all countries allied or neutral an 
outburst of anguish and awful fright. When, as in 
a flash of lightning, the world saw all the work of 
French civilization in the past, it realized the salut- 
ary and unique influence of that civilisation, and it 
was with a sort of terrible awe that it faced the dis- 
tant future with the thought that France could give 
no aid. It seemed that humanity was about to lose 
that luminous and beneficent genius which for so 
many centuries had served it as its guide. A volume 
might be made up from the touching evidences of 
friendship which our misfortune evoked and which 
our victory soon changed into a warm outburst of 



FRKNCH CIVILISATION 93 

delight. In Spain and in Italy, in Switzerland and 
in Holland, in England and in Russia, everywhere 
confident joy and hope revived followed the 
gloomy anxiety of those tragic days. We may say 
without boasting : the world, holding its breath, wit- 
nessed an event which was decisive in the history of 
the world, for it saw, understood, and realized per- 
haps, unknown to itself how dear and how neces- 
sary France was. Just as a friend whose smiling 
and discreet love appears to us at its value, only 
when we are threatened with losing him, so France 
about to succumb seemed more beautiful and more 
worthy than ever of the admiration and affection of 
all. It was a Swiss, Paul Seippel, who wrote at that 
moment: "We were saying one to the other — if 
France is crushed this time what is to become of 
her ? What is to be done with that nation which has 
played such a magnificent role in the history of the 
world and to which we French speaking Swiss owe 
the best of our thought ? What place will be left to 
her on the face of the globe? What role can she 
still play ? Who in the world will be able to counter- 
balance her conquerors ?" And he might have add- 
ed : "Who will be from now on our great teacher 
of humanity?" 

For it is always to this ideal that we must return, 
when we desire to penetrate into the very heart of 
French civilisation. It is the mark of the originality 
of France and it is her mission also to see all things 
under the aspect of humanity — sub specie humanit- 
atis. Hence, also, that power of sympathy which 



94 FRENCH CIVILISATION 

flows from her literature, her philosophy, her re- 
ligion and from her entire history. France has at 
times carried the love of humanity to a point where 
it became dangerous to herself and more than once 
in the course of her existence she has been the vic- 
tim and dupe of her own humanitarian tendencies. 
A glorious weakness is that which consists in not 
knowing hatred, in not distrusting mankind, in for- 
getting too quickly the hard lessons of experience, 
obstinate jealousy and unscrupulous ambition. 
France has never been able to believe that force 
alone, the force of pride and brute strength, could 
be the last word in the affairs of this world. She 
has never admitted that science could have for its 
ultimate purpose to multiply the means of destruc- 
tion and oppression, and it was one of her old writ- 
ers, Rabelais, who pronounced these memorable 
words: ''Science without conscience is the ruin of 
the soul." She has not been able to conceive that an 
ethnic group, a particular type of mind, should have 
the right to suppress others : instead of a rigid and 
mechanical uniformity of thought and life, the ideal 
to which she aspires, is that of the free play, 
spontaneous development, and the living harmony 
of the varying geniuses of the nations of the world. 
A world in which flourished the systematic and un- 
reasoning abuse of brute force, pedantic formalism, 
bureaucratic haughtiness, fatuous and so-called sci- 
entific ugliness and a taste for the "Kolossal" would 
seem to her the most hateful of hells. What others 
call Kultur she calls by its true name, Barbarism. 



FRENCH CIVILISATION 95 

In contrast to this barbarism, the more barbarous be- 
cause scientific, French civilisation stands out clear- 
ly, trait for trait, in constant opposition. France 
means liberty, lovable grace, a sense of proportion, 
courtesy, discretion, refinement, — France means in- 
dulgence, pity, charity, — in a word, France means 
humanity. If she should disappear from among the 
nations of the world, human life would lose some 
part of its nobility and beauty. 



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